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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27986208">A Matter of Chance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713'>Steerpike13713</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(very mild, Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cuddling &amp; Snuggling, Drunken Shenanigans, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Magic Rings: Just Say No, Magical Accidents, Molly really is an awful roommate, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Mutual Pining, Other, Sharing a Bed, Sort Of, Soul Bond, but there's no tag for 'unwanted two-way empathic bond', i have looked, it's not souls, not sure if this really warrants a tag really)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:35:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>179,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27986208</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steerpike13713/pseuds/Steerpike13713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Nott finds a set of enchanted rings outside a gnoll mine near Alfield, nobody in their newly-formed adventuring party really thinks twice about taking and using the things. They're adventurers now, after all, and looting is just a part of the lifestyle.<br/>Who goes around enchanting wedding rings, anyway?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>505</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>413</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, this is based on a prompt I received on my tumblr a while back (https://thornfield13713.tumblr.com/post/636414622788993024/51-81-99-widomauk). I was bitten by a plotbunny while avoiding my responsibilities to other unfinished works, and decided that this might as well work. This is my first time writing for this fandom, and I am only on episode 35, so...be kind to me, as I haven't yet got a good enough handle on any of these characters for my own comfort, and this is why the rest of the cast have a relatively minor role in this - shout-out to Shakäste, who is *really hard* to write for, despite his awesomeness, which is why he has a relatively minimal role in this one. That and if I allowed him to take a larger role, he'd resolve the whole main conflict too quickly.<br/>The title comes from Pride and Prejudice: 'happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance…It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life'. Somehow, however, I do get the feeling that this is not what the practical Miss Lucas had in mind.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was Nott who found the rings, because who else but Nott would, upon finding the bloodied, broken remains of a couple of poor sods probably not unlike themselves lying in the wreckage of a caravan with hyenas picking at their bones, decide to go through their pockets in case the gnolls had missed anything valuable when they dragged the rest of the caravan back to their lair, wherever that was. Tunnels, based on the evidence in front of him. Molly was not looking forward to tunnels. Trying to get his sword to do that- that thing it had done yesterday, that Molly still didn’t quite understand and wasn’t sure he wanted to - Molly might be willing to <em> use </em> the cold voice in the back of his head that whispered about the weaknesses of the undead, and had known just where to strike in the fight against Kylre back in Trostenwald, but that didn’t mean he <em> liked </em>it - that had been trouble enough without having to go underground at the end of it.</p><p>Not that he had any particular objections to free gear, and it wasn’t like there was enough of whoever these people had been for burial to really be a practical option at this point, but...there was a time and a place, was what Molly was getting at here, and anything the gnolls had left when they picked the carts over was either worthless, sentimental or both, and that was...just depressing, really. The things people carried with them that didn’t have any meaning except to themselves. It was depressing for them to lose those things, and it was depressing for you when you looked at your score at the end of a night to find that you’d ended up pickpocketing a couple of badly-but-lovingly embroidered handkerchiefs and a straw doll.</p><p>“Caleb!” Nott was already dashing over. “Caleb, you’re not going to believe this!”</p><p>Caleb was already turning. “<em> Was </em>? Ah- What is it I am not going to believe?”</p><p>“I found a leg under one of the carts,” Nott hissed in a stage whisper. “A whole leg! Just sort of...lying there! And I was just going to leave it alone, but most of its breeches were still on, so I figured-”</p><p>“...free meat?” Molly suggested, just to break the tension.</p><p>Nott shot a glare at him. “I <em> figured </em> ,” she repeated, looking up at Caleb. “That it might’ve taken some of its pockets with it. So, I had a look, and I found <em> these </em>. He must’ve been carrying them with him when the gnolls attacked!”</p><p>Even Beau, who had been with Molly, poking around looking for the entrance to the  mine the gnolls seemed to have co-opted as their own personal private lair, swivelled her head around to take a look when she heard that.</p><p>What Nott had found were...rings. They looked ordinary enough to Molly’s eye - both made of gold and relatively plain, with inscriptions that Molly couldn’t read and didn’t care to. He could make a few guesses at what those rings had been for. Better to leave them where they’d been. Some things weren’t meant to be pawed and picked over by anyone who happened along.</p><p>“Are they...magical at all?” he asked, trying not to think about who had carried those rings, and who they’d probably been meant for. Someone else in the caravan, maybe? Or was there some person, somewhere out there, who’d probably never find out why <em> their </em>person had never come home from their trading venture. Maybe if they found some survivors they could ask around.</p><p>“I was going to ask <em> Caleb </em>that,” Nott muttered sulkily, for once sounding her age...whatever that was. It was hard to tell, under all the bandages and the mask, and Molly hadn’t met many goblins anyway.</p><p>“I- Is this really the time?” Caleb asked, frowning. “Not...not to belabour the point, but if we are going to find any of these people alive, then...maybe not waste a spell this early?”</p><p>“But what if it’s something useful?” Jester demanded, her eyes round and fascinated.</p><p>Beau snorted. “If it was that useful, why’d he have it in his pocket instead of using it?”</p><p>“Sentimental value?” Molly suggested. “Those...those don’t look like magic rings.”</p><p>Caleb, though, was leaning in with a fascinated look on his face. “You...you would be surprised. Many of the most powerful and dangerous magical items I have ever seen looked like nothing special to the eye.”</p><p>He reached out to lay a finger on one of the bands, and Molly felt the odd, ozone-laced tingle of an active spell nearby. Caleb’s eyes widened.</p><p>“You were right, Nott. This...this is very good.”</p><p>“Why?” Jester asked, lighting up with excitement. “Is it powerful? What does it do?”</p><p>“It-” Caleb coughed. “It...acts as a wearable version of a spell. Mage Armour, I think. I already have that one, but this...this allows me to use it all the time, without the need for casting, and, you know, since I have already used one spell to identify the ring…”</p><p>Fjord nodded. “Sounds like you ought to take that, then, what with you bein’...” he paused, apparently trying to find a non-insulting way to phrase it.</p><p>“<em> Squishy </em>, and all,” Jester supplied.</p><p>“<em> Ja </em>- Ah. Yes, I will do that,” Caleb said quickly, reaching out for the rings. “The other one…”</p><p>This time, Molly was expecting the pulse of magic. Caleb blinked.</p><p>“This one...carries a healing spell. It is not...not constant, you understand, but if any one of us were to sustain any serious damage, it might, ah, it might at least mean Jester need not use her healing powers any more than is strictly necessary…”</p><p>Jester brightened up immediately at that suggestion.</p><p>“So...you wanna keep that one too, or…?” Beau started, eyeing the ring with a considering look. “Because, I mean, that seems pretty useful for any of us…”</p><p>Caleb was frowning down at the ring. “It...well, Nott found it, so, you know, it only seems fair…”</p><p>Nott shook her head. There was something pained about the look on her face.</p><p>“I...no, thanks, Caleb,” she muttered. “I...I’m not as squishy as you, and anyway, I’m not sure it’d fit on my…” she waved a hand as if she’d suddenly forgotten the word ‘fingers’ - no judgement if she had, Molly still did that sometimes, even now he’d been talking for two years and had, he thought, just about gotten the hang of it. Rather too well, if you listened to Ornna.</p><p>Caleb looked troubled. “Are you sure? I do not mean to be rude, <em> spatz</em>, but you are very small, and it would mean you might take less harm in the future…”</p><p>“I’m sure.” Nott had her hands together, and was toying with one of her fingers. “I...I’ll get by. I’d feel better if you had it, but…”</p><p>“I mean, there <em> are </em>six of us,” Beau pointed out baldly. “I’m just saying. There’s more options here than just you two.”</p><p>“I- <em> Ja </em>.” Caleb swallowed. “I...if you are sure, Nott, then...Mollymauk, would you like a ring?”</p><p>Molly blinked. “...come again?”</p><p>“I…” Caleb coloured. “I just mean...with your abilities, you do, you know, get injured rather a lot, and with this you might be able to close up the cuts you make right away, instead of leaving them open to get infected or slow you down later…”</p><p>“No, no, it’s a good idea,” Molly said quickly. No sense in turning down free healing - Jester was good, but you couldn’t rely on anyone exclusively, after all. “I, uh, just wasn’t expecting to be the first port of call, that’s all. Oh- Give it here, then.”</p><p>He put out a hand, half-expecting Caleb to just drop the thing into his palm, but he didn’t. Caleb’s hand - quick and deft and long-fingered, and perversely cool to the touch where Molly had expected it to be as hot as his flames - caught Molly by the wrist, and with the other he slid the ring onto Molly’s finger, slow and careful and almost ritualistic. Molly didn’t know whether he ought to crack a joke or worry about being sacrificed to dark gods in exchange for a shipment of books.</p><p>He didn’t let go, after. Molly had expected him to, but Caleb’s long fingers stayed wrapped around Molly’s wrist. Molly could feel the pen-calluses on Caleb’s fingers, the roughness of old scars and rope burns with dirt ground into them, the slight unevenness where bones had broken and not been set quite right, the bitten-short tips of his nails. He’d never taken to palmistry the way he had to his cards, but he bet he could read the story of Caleb’s life in those hands, if Caleb cared to show them.</p><p>Time and place, Tealeaf. Caleb might be well worth looking at under all that grime or he might not, but Molly wasn’t even sure he’d be sticking around after Yasha came back. He’d only come along because his other choices were trying to catch up with whatever sad remnant was left of the carnival or staying and joining in Gustav’s punishment, and if those had been the only choices, he’d probably have gone for door number two, just because the circus without Gustav wasn’t anywhere Molly wanted to be. He gave it two weeks before what was left of the carnival imploded entirely without <em> someone </em>willing to try and keep the peace. A month, tops.</p><p>No guarantee this little group would last even that long, but there wasn’t much point in taking everything that wasn’t nailed down and disappearing into the night without Yasha, and when just this one job already promised more coin than Molly had ever <em> seen </em> in his life before. Beau could mutter darkly about how little he could be trusted all she liked, but Molly had a good thing going here...well, apart from Beau’s presence, which he’d admit wasn’t exactly ideal...and he wasn’t going to throw it away. Not unless something <em> substantially </em>better came along, anyway, and he didn’t think he was alone in that.</p><p>And, speaking of which, they really had better get on with finding wherever those gnolls had gone if they wanted to get paid for killing them, and rescuing whoever was left to be rescued. Molly was in favour of rescue missions, on the whole, even if the sight of that torn-off leg hadn’t done much for Molly’s certainty that there would be anyone left alive to rescue when they got there.</p><p>Still, no sense in dawdling, or there definitely wouldn’t. He pulled away, and Caleb released his grip on Molly’s wrist as if he’d been scalded.</p><p>It didn’t take long, after that - Nott turned up a woven ghillie net thrown over the entrance to a mineshaft, and then it was down and into the depths.</p><p>Molly...wasn’t the biggest fan of tunnels. Or caves. Underground spaces in general, really. Not that he’d had much of an opportunity to find that out before, but now that he was, he could decidedly say that he wasn’t a fan. The tunnels were too tight, the ceilings still low. His tail lashed uneasily, and he reminded himself that the walls probably weren’t <em> actually </em> closing in, no matter how much it might feel like it. He tried to think of something else - drinks at the tavern after all this was over, seeing if he could talk any of the others into letting him read them a fortune, keep his card skills sharp. The odds of better entertainment in a one-horse town like Alfield weren’t exactly high even without the gnoll attack - that was how the carnival got most of its business, by <em> being </em> the better entertainment - but Molly wouldn’t have lasted this long if he couldn’t find his own amusement <em> somewhere </em>. But he couldn’t do that if they didn’t get through these mines first.</p><p>Getting through the mines was easier said than done, what with the apparent small army of <em> undead cultist gnolls </em> down there. Undead cultist gnolls whose deity that cold voice - the one Molly tried not to listen to unless it really, really mattered - <em> recognised </em> , just in case this wasn’t fucked-up enough. Yeenoghu. Demon Prince of all gnolls. Which made <em> sense </em>, but that- That was not knowledge Molly had any reason to have. It wasn’t knowledge Molly wanted or needed to have - he didn’t need to know what these gnolls were sacrificing to in order to put a stop to them doing it.</p><p>No. He wasn’t going to think about that. Time to just...get these people back, if there was anyone left the gnomes hadn’t picked over and probably eaten, collect their damn gnoll ears and get back on the road before they outstayed their welcome with the locals. He’d been dealing with this since he dragged himself out of the grave, and it hadn’t been a problem yet. He could hold off on panicking about that until Yasha was there to hear about it.</p><p>But, whatever, Molly could deal with all that. He could deal with strange, too-perceptive clerics turning up out of nowhere, and undead gnoll cultists, and fucking <em> manticores </em> , apparently. What- What even had been these gnolls’ plan here? Just...keeping a pair of manticores in a mine near a little farm town and hoping they didn’t eventually decide to eat their captors? In <em> what world </em> was that a good plan? He was frankly <em> embarrassed </em>for this little cult.</p><p>Anyway, everything was going...more-or-less predictably, even if it <em> was </em>underground, the cold voice had more-or-less subsided...right up until Caleb reached out his hand and the gnoll priest caught light like a Winter's Crest candle, and kept burning even as the manticore met a heart-explode-y end at the hands of the new cleric, Shakäste. And, honestly, Molly could’ve dealt with that too - the guy was wearing several flayed gnolls and engaging in human sacrifice, Molly was pretty secure in saying he probably wasn’t that good a person - but Caleb…</p><p>Caleb was staring into the flames, transfixed, his eyes great and blue and unfocused, unseeing, and Molly-</p><p>Molly had never been very good at leaving well enough alone.</p><p>The slap was just meant to be a bracing, wake-up-call sort of thing, but Caleb staggered like it had nearly knocked him off his feet - shit, maybe it had, the guy looked like a stiff breeze could probably snap him in half - when Molly reached him.</p><p>“Hey! Back in the game! Time for that later!” Molly swallowed. Caleb was still waxy-pale, sick-looking, maybe a little weak on his feet, and Molly caught his shoulders to steady him. “You all right?”</p><p>Caleb gave a soft, pained exhale of ‘Yeah,’ sounding about as far from ‘all right’ as it was possible to get while still standing upright.</p><p>It was- Was just <em> habit </em> , really, kissing him. It was the sort of thing Molly would’ve done to Toya or Yasha or either of the Knot Sisters, if they looked as sick and pale and shaken as Caleb did just then. It didn’t <em> mean </em>anything except that Caleb was miserable and heartsick and like the saddest, most bedraggled little stray Molly had ever seen in his life, and he’d always had a soft spot for those.</p><p>It <em> shouldn’t </em>have meant anything more than that, anyway.</p><p>But then, before Molly had even quite pulled away, before he could release Caleb’s shoulder and hurry away, trusting and hoping like hell that Caleb would be behind him, there was a whirl and rustle of cloth, a flare of green, and a man’s voice laughing just at the edge of hearing.</p><p>And then-</p><p>Molly staggered, his grip going white-knuckled on Caleb’s shoulder, as a surge of something like nausea racked through him. He felt, suddenly, like he’d just plunged into cold water, and was still struggling to find his footing.</p><p>And, when he looked down, into Caleb’s face, Caleb looked every bit as lost and confused as he felt.</p><p>“We should…” he managed, pulling away and nearly stumbling, though the floor was still quite level. “I don’t...was that a spell, or…?”</p><p>Caleb didn’t seem to be up to speaking yet - he shook his head weakly, and Molly found himself reaching out, just on instinct, to steady Caleb again against his side.</p><p>“...well,” came Shakäste’s voice. “Congratulations. Not the world’s best timing, but in about fifty years it’ll make one <em> hell </em>of a story to tell the grandkids, if that’s something you two are interested in.”</p><p>Molly blinked. Then, feeling the effect was being lost, swivelled his head around as far as he could and <em> stared </em>.</p><p>“...thank you?” he hazarded, because that was always a good start. Marks were always easier to charm when they felt you owed them one, or they owed you one, or just if you were halfway polite. “Feels like it should be the other way ‘round, though, since you were the one that finished it off…”</p><p>The nausea was starting to recede a bit now, and Molly couldn’t help but be grateful for that, even if everything else about this situation was confusing <em> at best </em> . He still felt...odd...around the edges. He really couldn’t describe it any better than that, except that it felt- It felt a little like a pale echo of the way it had felt, those first few weeks at the circus when he was just starting to be aware of himself, still mostly <em> empty </em> . It was a faint, pale shadow of that terrible feeling, though, even if it still made something in him shudder at the memory. He felt confused, too, which was natural enough, and so exhausted he felt he ought to have run a mile, and just the slightest bit... <em> guilty </em> ? What sense did that make? Guilt wasn’t an emotion Molly had much time for - he’d made his share of mistakes, sure, even in just two years. Mistakes were part of being alive. You made amends as you could and moved on. This sort of gnawing, formless guilt that didn’t attach, so far as Molly could tell, to <em> anything </em>he’d done in the last few days was something new to him. He cast a sidelong look at Caleb, half-wondering if he’d hurt him without properly noticing it. Caleb was still very pale, but his face had lost some of the waxen cast it had had, and though he was leaning on Molly quite heavily, he was only a slight weight against Molly’s side.</p><p>Shakäste’s milky eyes narrowed, the Grand Duchess fluttering down to land on his left shoulder. Molly still wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. Oh, the man had charm. No denying the man had charm. Even Beau had been charmed by him, and that wasn’t easily done, even by someone as objectively charming as Molly himself. But he saw too much for Molly’s liking, and something in the back of Molly’s brain told him the old man had seen right through Molly the moment the Grand Duchess had set eyes on him, and that never boded well.</p><p>“I was going to say ‘on your marriage’,” Shakäste said, sounding almost amused. “But I’m getting the feeling that wasn’t <em> quite </em>as intentional as I assumed.”</p><p>Molly opened his mouth, then closed it again. He glanced at Caleb, who barely seemed to have processed what they’d just heard at all. He looked back at Shakäste, half-expecting the old man to crack up laughing and reveal that this had all been some great, glorious, <em> spectacularly </em>badly-timed prank.</p><p>And, somewhere behind Shakäste, just a little to one side, Nott got out her crossbow, and levelled it in Molly’s direction.</p><p>“...uh,” Fjord said into the silence that followed that little pronouncement. “...I realise this might sound like kinda a stupid question, but what do you mean by ‘marriage’, exactly?”</p><p>Against Molly’s side, Caleb stirred. “I...would like to know that as well, I think,” he said weakly, casting a distinctly unflattering look of alarm in Molly’s direction, which Molly thought was rather unfair. All right, he was a carnival barker currently without a carnival, which probably put him between ‘vagabond’ and ‘mountebank’ right now on the official classification of ne’er-do-wells unwelcome in the Dwendalian Empire, but it wasn’t as if Caleb was in a much better position, and anyway, Molly had been reliably informed that he had a <em> sparkling </em>personality.</p><p>Still, Caleb had just been staring off into space, and was still leaning very heavily on Molly’s shoulder, quite heedless of the fact that he was currently the only thing standing between - quite literally standing between - Molly and ending up on the business end of one of Nott’s crossbow bolts. Which was  nice of him, even if Molly was pretty sure it was only because whatever Caleb was in a fit state for, paying attention to where Nott’s crossbow was pointing wasn’t it. Molly could be generous with Caleb’s sad lack of taste, under the circumstances.</p><p>Jester was bouncing already on the balls of her feet. “Ooh! I think I know! It was those <em> rings </em>, wasn’t it! The ones we found on that corpse outside the gnoll mine?”</p><p>“Huh. So you <em> didn’t </em>know about this.” Shakäste nodded, reaching up with one hand to stroke a finger over the Grand Duchess’s tiny head, and letting her nip at his fingers with her long needle-sharp beak. “Did you know what those were before you put them on?”</p><p>“I...I thought I did,” Caleb muttered, and Molly felt another wave of nausea roll through him, and a louder pulse of - guilt, <em> again </em> ? In what way was <em> any </em>of this his fault? Either of their faults? All they’d done was scavenge a couple of...of wedding rings, apparently, from a corpse that no longer had any use for them! Molly would be the first to admit, stealing wedding rings wasn’t exactly high on the list of the most morally admirable actions he’d ever committed, but he’d sort of assumed, once the magic came into things, that that was...that was different. Who went around enchanting wedding rings? Or at least, enchanting them separately. For that matter, how often did your average person really need an enchanted ring that conjured automatic magical armour around them? From where Molly was standing, they could chalk this all up as an honest mistake.</p><p>“You use magic to identify them?” Shakäste pressed. “Or...was it just an observation thing?”</p><p>“Nein- That is, I...ah...I did use magic.” Caleb was shifting awkwardly, radiating discomfort so obviously that Molly felt compelled to intervene.</p><p>“Not that this isn’t a <em> fascinating </em> question,” he put in, “But we have it somewhere we’re <em> not </em>surrounded by rotting gnoll corpses and most of a dead manticore? There’s at least half a tavern still standing back in Alfield…”</p><p>Whatever the explanation for this was, after all, it would probably be considerably easier to deal with after a few <em> very </em>stiff drinks. And maybe by the time they’d had those very stiff drinks, Nott would stop to consider that this really had been a complete accident and Molly really, truly had no nefarious designs on her...travelling-companion? Foster-father? Surrogate older brother? Honestly, detangling the exact nature of the relationship between the goblin girl and the group’s resident perpetually-filthy wizard hadn’t been anywhere on Molly’s mental list of priorities. They cared about each other, more than either of them cared about anyone else in the group. Molly got that, he and Yasha were about the same way, and that was really all he needed to know.</p><p>“I...have other places to be than Alfield,” Shakäste said, and there was something almost careful in his voice. “But you...you might want to check those rings again.”</p><p>“No, but seriously,” Fjord pressed. “Is this...I mean...I’m guessing this isn’t a <em> legal </em>thing, because last I checked you needed paperwork for that, so...how exactly are they married, again? Is this a...a religious thing, or...because I don’t remember any vows being said, or...anything of that nature, but…”</p><p>“Hey!” Beau cut in, calling from halfway across the chamber where she was already combing through the great heap of accumulated junk that had been the manticore’s nest. “Not that this whole wedding drama isn’t <em> hilarious </em>, and all, but we’ve still got a lot of shit to get through here, so...you know I hate to agree with Molly, but...this once, he might have a point.”</p><p>“Well, fuck you too,” Molly said cheerfully, trying to hide how desperately relieved he felt at all those eyes no longer being turned on him...except- </p><p>Except that wasn’t right either. Molly <em> liked </em> to be the centre of attention. Not that it was exactly fun right now, but he shouldn’t mind it <em> this </em>much. Caleb, at least, looked better for it. Maybe this was all he needed - a bit of time off on his own without everyone crowding around and asking questions, and then they could figure this out tomorrow, once some of the shock had worn off. It felt too much like kicking a stray cat, putting all this pressure on him just now.</p><p>Caleb released his hold on Molly’s shoulder, still very pale but not shaking anymore, and staggered off a few steps, before dropping, graceless, to the floor, and Nott lowered the crossbow to dash across the floor to his side, clambering half into Caleb’s lap in her urgency. Molly blinked, startled by the warm rush of affection and relief he felt at the sight. But then, it <em> was </em>cute, and anyone would take pity on Caleb now, after everything that had just happened, and a few seconds later Fjord was calling him over to see about getting the manticore butchered, so really, what time was there to dwell on it?</p><p>He still felt strange, though, all the time they were getting on with the butchering and gathering up what remained of four great sets of manacles - apparently the manticore had been chained down here for quite a while before the gnolls decided to let it loose - to sell. That same awful, hollowed-out, exhausted feeling, wrung-out and prickling all over with unease. It made Molly want to scratch his skin off. Keeping busy didn’t work - Molly could carve off the manticore’s head and go through the wreckage of its nest, and normally that would work to take his mind off whatever shit he didn’t want to think about...but it didn’t make this feeling go away. It felt like- Like that one time he’d come down with something last winter, when he’d been properly aware enough to appreciate how shitty that felt, to be weighed down and unable to get away from it.</p><p>Maybe it was just being here. Underground. It wasn’t something Molly had ever done before - not many opportunities to go underground for a barker in a travelling carnival, and the last time Molly had been underground, even if it hadn’t been nearly this deep...he didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to remember the weight of earth on his face, all around him, choking on it, clawing his way out onto a moonlit hillside, hacking up blood and grave earth and empty of anything but dumb animal fear-</p><p>Caleb made a low, pained noise where he was sitting, and Molly’s head snapped around almost of its own accord.</p><p>“Caleb? Caleb?” Nott was already fussing over him, and Molly felt another odd, distant pulse of warmth and, at the same time...<em> more </em> guilt? What- What was he supposed to have done <em> now </em> ? What did this feeling <em> want </em>from him?</p><p>All right, he’d be the first to admit that killing baby manticores probably wasn’t <em> great </em>for their karma just as a group, but that had been Nott’s idea, and Molly was pretty sure she didn’t feel especially cut up over it. Molly had been on the other side of the chamber trying to fight off a not-yet-vengeful-but-still-pretty-pissed-off mother manticore.</p><p>He couldn’t think of anything else he’d done recently that he was all that sorry about, other than what had happened to Gustav and that...that wasn’t really on Molly either. He could send money back, maybe, save up - the take from this job alone might make a decent dent in what Trostenwald meant to take from Gustav, if Molly could hang onto it long enough to come back this way, because no way was he trusting that sort of money to the post. That resolution really ought to have cleared the whole thing up - Molly had identified what it was he felt bad about, he was going to make amends, he could get on with his life now, keeping that in mind but not letting it rule him...but somehow that little pulse of guilt wouldn’t leave him be.</p><p>Caleb, at least, was looking better. Well, he was sitting up and at least not trying to fend off Nott’s fussing. He might even be up for making it out of this mineshaft on his own two feet, though Molly wasn’t exactly about to bet the whole circus on that. </p><p>There wasn’t nearly as much down here as Molly could’ve hoped for - a ring, a couple of sets of ridiculously massive manacles, a silver ring with a pretty blue gem - apparently rings were the hot commodity in this gnoll mine tonight. Hopefully <em> this </em>one didn’t come with any weird religious-obligation side-effects. Molly was definitely going to have a few questions for Shakäste about that when they got back to Alfield. Not much else. The most valuable things in this whole damn gnoll mine, as it turned out, were the rings - Molly did, in fact, appreciate his cuts closing up almost the instant he inflicted them, no matter what sort of misunderstanding they’d got into with the rings and...whatever that thing he’d seen had been - and that little jar of ears that represented their night’s pay.</p><p>He was nearly out of the chamber altogether, following after Fjord, who seemed to be carrying Nott’s entire body-weight and then some in chains, when he realised that Caleb was still sitting half-curled on himself by the great nest. Molly couldn’t have said how he knew that - he hadn’t looked back, hadn’t glanced around at the others...but he knew that Caleb was back there, still mustering the strength to stand.</p><p>He turned back. He wouldn’t have left his worst enemy down here with the corpse alone after an episode like Caleb had had at the end of that fight. He wouldn’t have left <em> Beau </em> down here after that, more pressingly, since Molly didn’t <em> have </em>a worst enemy to wish these things on.</p><p>Nott was still hovering around Caleb when Molly turned back - he hadn’t known that, the way he’d known about Caleb, and that was just one more strange thing in a whole list of little strangenesses today.</p><p>They both frowned up at him as Molly held out a hand to haul Caleb up, and Molly himself felt a little shock of surprise at it. That didn’t make any sense either - he wasn’t a monster, and it was what he’d meant to do. He’d do as much for anyone who looked that miserable and not think twice about it, why was that suddenly surprising? It wasn’t right. It wasn’t- It wasn’t <em> his </em>. It felt like that terrible cold voice, whispering demonic secrets in the back of his mind. Like the moment when his sword had lit up, and Molly hadn’t known how or why or what he could do to stop it.</p><p>He swallowed against a rising tide of panic, and flashed his best attempt at a bright, reassuring smile.</p><p>“Come on. The conquering hero has earned his reward, and must now be subjected to being feted by the grateful citizenry.”</p><p>Caleb blinked up at him, and an uneasy, roiling feeling crept in around the edges of Molly’s mind.</p><p>“Ah...I am not sure. That is, I...ah...” Caleb mumbled, taking hold of Molly’s hand and letting Molly pull him to his feet. He looked steady enough once he was upright, at least, though something in the back of Molly’s head suggested that if that were so, it had been hard-won. “I...thank you for what you did, back there, with the…well, you know.”</p><p>Molly waved an airy hand. At least, he intended it to be airy. Probably he ended up spattering anything behind him with gnoll blood, but since nobody was going to need to clean that up, he wasn’t feeling too sorry about it.</p><p>“Don’t worry about it. Does...are you going to be all right getting out of here?”</p><p>“<em> Ja </em>. Ah- Yes, I think so. It was...it wasn’t one of my worse episodes.”</p><p>It had looked pretty damn terrible from where Molly was standing. But, even if he’d wanted to go for a deep dive into his new companions’ personal issues, the middle of a gnoll mine that might not be quite as empty as it looked was definitely not the place for it. Later. There would be time to worry about it later.</p><p>“Okay. Come on. Let’s go get some sunlight.”</p><p>Caleb still needed to lean on him a little as they made their way out, and from the anxious looks everyone else kept casting back at them, Molly wasn’t the only one who’d been worried by Caleb’s little episode. And, apparently, they got worse. Good to know. Molly didn’t need to know much more than that.</p><p>That unnerving feeling was starting to recede a little, but like floodwater, it left a heavy, sticky, silty feeling behind, and Molly was willing to bet he’d be feeling that for a while now. Whoever- Whatever echo that was, it was going to be with him for a while. He wondered if there was any decent alcohol in Alfield. He was going to need it.</p><p>“Are…” Caleb coughed. “Are you quite all right, Mollymauk?”</p><p>Molly blinked. Just through some kind of traumatic episode - Molly wasn’t even going to <em> guess </em> at what memories that fire spell had stirred up, though he could’ve probably come up with some kind of story if held at knifepoint - and clearly just barely getting it back together, and Caleb was worrying about Molly? Well, wasn’t he just <em> full </em>of surprises.</p><p>“Oh- Never better,” he lied.</p><p>Caleb made a sceptical sort of noise in his throat, and cast a look at Molly that felt altogether too penetrating, and not in the fun way. Nott, Molly realised, glancing down and away, had slipped away off ahead, and he thought he saw her small figure next to Shakäste up ahead.</p><p>“I- I really am sorry about this,” Caleb muttered, his eyes flickering around nervously, even as he leaned a little more heavily on Molly’s shoulder.</p><p>Molly brought up his spare hand to steady him. “Not your fault. We all have a few things we can’t cope with. For me,” he added, because when in doubt, what option was there but to bullshit his way out? “It’s spiders. Can’t stand the creepy little things. Probably something to do with that cult I told you all about? You remember that?”</p><p>“<em> Ja </em>.”</p><p>Molly coughed. “Yeah, well. What I <em> didn’t </em>mention was that it was a cult of Lolth. My family weren’t all tieflings - some ancestor or other of ours had made an ill-advised deal with a greater demon associated with spiders, so every second or third generation a couple of us would be born with a few...extra special features. Anyway-”</p><p>“<em> Nein </em>...no, that’s not...I mean...this marriage thing...” Molly could almost hear the wince in Caleb’s voice at the word, and this time he could broadly identify the source of the little pulse of guilt - this had all been set off by him deciding to kiss Caleb, after all, even if he’d just meant it as a comfort. “I- I truly did not intend-”</p><p>“Yeah, I know.” Molly shrugged, or tried to - it was hard to do when supporting someone who wasn’t quite as steady on his feet as he’d seemed. “But, look, this...this doesn’t have to mean anything. I mean, there’s no need to fill out fresh papers, nobody’s asking you to start calling yourself ‘Caleb Tealeaf’...”</p><p>People, in Molly’s experience, tended to set far too much store by papers. They were about the only reason Molly had a name and not a monogram, for one thing. And, honestly, ‘Mollymauk Widogast’ was right out. Molly <em> liked </em>his name. Even if he had been the marrying kind, that part was non-negotiable.</p><p>“I’m...ah...not wedded to ‘Widogast’,” Caleb offered, half-joking.</p><p>“You won’t be wedded to anything soon enough,” Molly promised. “If it’s the rings, all we have to do is take them off, and-”</p><p>He attempted to suit deed to word, holding up his free hand just in front of him and doing his best to tug off the ring without jostling Caleb badly enough to knock him off his feet.</p><p>The ring wouldn’t budge.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caleb had never thought he would marry.</p><p>Bren had, for a while. Until he was sixteen, it had been the expected trajectory of his life. He would go to the Academy, do well - Bren had never <em> not </em>done well at any task set in front of him, when he put his mind to it. Caleb wished that he didn’t still miss that sense of certainty - meet some girl, some boy, some person, and bring them home to meet his parents.</p><p>Instead, he had met Trent Ikithon, and that comfortable vision of his future had faded away. It had felt significant, then. They would never marry, he or Astrid or Wulf - the Volstrucker did not marry. They were servants of the crown, anonymous knives in the dark, and a spouse, a family, the life his parents had wanted for him would mean nothing but divided loyalties, and that could not be abided.</p><p>Bren hadn’t minded that. He’d known from the beginning that he was being chosen for something great, some higher calling than to become some petty arcanist in some little town like Blumenthal, with a shop and a partner and the grandchildren his parents had gently hinted at whenever he came home for a visit. Volstrucker were supposed to make sacrifices for the Empire, but that part hadn’t felt like a sacrifice. And...well, it wasn’t as if he was wanting for companionship. It had been all three of them together, after all. He and Astrid and Eadwulf. None of them would ever marry, and so they would stay as they were, an insular little knot of three, bound more closely than any spouses could be by their common duty, and the blood they had shed and spilt for the Empire.</p><p>And then his parents’ house had burnt, and he had broken, and when he had slipped out of the asylum by a back way, ragged and hungry and shattered by eleven years of guilt all coming home to roost, he’d had bigger things to mourn than a barely-regarded childhood expectation that would never come to pass. A man on the run couldn’t think of settling down, and even if he could-</p><p>Well. Who’d have him?</p><p>Nowhere, on any of those paths he’d followed, had there been room for anyone like Mollymauk.</p><p>He could <em> feel </em>Mollymauk, still. He’d been drinking steadily all evening, even before Caleb had managed to cast ‘Identify’ on their rings again and they’d known the worst of it, and was now passed out in the next room over. If Caleb concentrated, he could probably pinpoint exactly where. He was trying very hard not to panic about that, but it wasn’t working particularly well, even with Frumpkin draped around his neck like a furry scarf.</p><p>Mollymauk hadn’t understood, when Caleb had asked to test whether this link went both ways, this strange sixth sense that meant Caleb could close his eyes and say, with absolute certainty, that Mollymauk had passed out on the floor of the room he and Fjord had agreed to share, even though the room was halfway down the corridor, and Caleb had still been downstairs when he felt Molly’s dread and nervous tension slip away into unconsciousness. He hadn’t understood, but he’d gamely agreed to it, made it sound like a game, like entertainment, like anything less than Caleb’s life and <em> worse </em>at stake here. Caleb had been left to find some quiet corner of the bar, where the crowd made it difficult to make out one more shabby human in a dull brown coat, and wait there, his fingers wrapped white-knuckled around his amulet and his heart in his throat, until he heard Nott’s voice in his ear to say that Mollymauk had tracked him down to this corner with one hand over his eyes and his back turned to the room, and all of the old terror had come flooding back.</p><p>Worse, Mollymauk had felt that terror too, and the look he’d given Caleb when Caleb took his seat next to Nott again had all but promised that there would be questions, soon enough, that Caleb didn’t think he would ever be ready to answer. They had been connected this way for just a few hours, and already Caleb wanted to scratch his own skin off to get away from it.</p><p>It felt- Ungrateful, really, after everything. Of the two of them, after all, <em> Caleb </em>should not be the one who objected to this. Mollymauk was- he was too much for Caleb. Too loud, too bright, too attention-grabbing. Just being around him made the place between Caleb’s shoulder-blades itch with the pressure of unseen eyes. But he was kind, and brave, and beautiful, and whatever his past held...it could not be worse than the things Caleb had done, and done willingly, before he had ever set his parents’ house aflame.</p><p>But-</p><p>He was supposed to be safe. He was supposed to be <em> untraceable </em> , just another vagrant scraping by on the outskirts of the Empire, no-one and nothing Trent Ikithon would ever lower his eyes far enough to see. And if this- these rings, this <em> link </em>could bypass the amulet’s protection-</p><p>Then Caleb would never be safe again, so long as the link was there between them. He ought to run, now, shake Nott awake and hit the road before dawn, heading anywhere but where the rest of the group were likely to be. Maybe there was a limit to the rings’ connection, or- He’d lose the finger, if it came to it, if that meant they couldn’t find him it would be <em> worth </em>the finger-</p><p>He was spiralling, he could <em> feel </em>it, the panic that ought to have kept him paralysed for a good few hours after today’s episode suddenly overtaking him all at once. If Trent came for him, if he heard, somehow, about what had happened here, or about the Nergaliid in Trostenwald and came looking for a ragtag, eye-catching, just-started band of...whatever the fuck they were supposed to be now...Caleb could run, but so long as Mollymauk remained, someone would be able to find him. It might be Trent, or Wulf, or Astrid, or any of the Volstrucker, because Caleb had never for one moment imagined it was only they three. But someone could find him, or compel Mollymauk to do so and then-</p><p>He didn’t know what Trent would do if he found Caleb again. He didn’t ever want to find out.</p><p>“Caleb?” Nott’s voice was soft and creaky with sleep.</p><p>“<em> Ja </em>, Nott?”</p><p>“We could...you know. It <em> is </em>‘until death do you part’...?”</p><p>It took a moment for Caleb to realise what she meant. “No. No, that is- I would rather not kill any of our travelling-companions. Not yet, anyway.”</p><p>Nott wrinkled her nose. “Not- Not <em> permanently </em> , or anything,” she said, “But...you know. Jester’s a cleric, so she can probably bring him back after a few seconds, and then death <em> will </em> have parted you, so you can...you know, just get back to normal?”<br/>
Caleb huffed out a weak, breathless little laugh. “That...I am not sure that is how it works, Nott, but we...we will keep that plan in our back pocket, <em> ja </em>?”</p><p>“I just…” Nott was twisting her hands together nervously. “I...I mean, Molly’s not the worst person we’ve ever met, but if he can- you know, give you his injuries...I mean, he does get injured a <em> lot </em>, and you’re pretty easy to hurt already…”</p><p>“That...isn’t how it works either.” It was the one thing that had stopped Caleb from running for the hills. Well, that and the fact that, even if he did, he suspected it wouldn’t stop the injuries from coming, if Mollymauk really could offload them so easily. “I- I have to <em> choose </em>to take them. All he can do is take my injuries for me, and the chances of that, you know, they aren’t very high.”</p><p>Nott brightened a little. “So...he can’t hurt you?”</p><p>“Not...not that way.”</p><p>Not that those scimitars couldn’t do the job quite well enough on their own. Not that Mollymauk having this much access to Caleb’s mind wasn’t dangerous enough by itself. Not that someone else couldn’t use Mollymauk to find him, even if Mollymauk himself had no interest in doing so himself.</p><p>“What about you?” Caleb found himself asking. “Do you...want to stay with these people?”</p><p>He almost hoped she would say ‘no’, and take the decision out of his hands. He wanted to leave, every sensible instinct said he should leave, but-</p><p>“I...think so?” Nott said slowly. “I mean...we should at least stay until we’ve been paid for the gnoll ears, right? And then, it’s a lot safer travelling with more than just the two of us, and, you know, since you’re sure he’s not going to hurt you…”</p><p>“Then we’ll stay.” Caleb’s mouth twitched. “And...you know...I am not sure desertion is quite enough for this divorce rite of Jester’s, so…”<br/>
Nott flinched. “It...it might be,” she said, in a small voice. “If...if you stay away long enough…”</p><p>“I thought you did not want to leave…”</p><p>“I didn’t! I mean- I don’t! I just…” Nott shifted. “I just...wanted to know where the rules are. I mean...you’ve never done this before, have you?”</p><p>Caleb blinked. “Never done what? Inadvertently married a teammate due to my own inability to properly identify enchanted wedding rings?”</p><p>“No- Well, that too, but also…”</p><p>It took Caleb a moment to realise that Nott was, for the first time, trying to ask about his past. It had always been a forbidden subject between them. Nott had mentioned her clan, once or twice, in passing, but Caleb had never pressed for details, just in case she took it as invitation to do the same.</p><p>Apparently, being unwantedly, accidentally married off to a circus performer he’d met less than a week ago due to a magical accident also counted as an invitation to ask about it. Caleb wished it would stop.</p><p>“Nein. No, I have never...been married. Or thought I would be. Our sort of life...it is not one that really allows for…”</p><p>Nott’s ears drooped. “Guess not,” she muttered.</p><p>Caleb looked at her in some alarm. He wasn’t precisely sure how old Nott was - older, certainly, than she appeared - but he was quite sure she wasn’t old enough for this to be...something she’d have any need to think about</p><p>“Nott, are you…” he trailed off. Was she <em> what </em>? All right? “Are you...is there something wrong?”</p><p>Nott just huddled deeper into her cloak. “No. It’s...I’m fine.”</p><p>“It is only...you do not sound fine, and I thought, maybe, if you are...uncomfortable, or…”</p><p>Nott looked down at her joined hands. She was toying with her fingers again.</p><p>“Let’s...let’s just try and get some sleep,” she said. “Or- I might stay up a bit longer, but you need to be up in the morning. Then Jester can do her ritual and and then, maybe, we can just...forget any of this ever happened.”</p><p>Caleb as, as it turned out, not the first of their party to make it down to the bar that morning. Unfortunately, the first person was Mollymauk.</p><p>He had known that even as he mounted the stairs, leaving Nott asleep in their room, one ear pricked up in sleep. It had been a rough night. He had dreamed of fire again, the way he always did after an episode, managing only a few hours of fitful sleep before the first grey light of dawn woke him, clammy with cold sweat and shaking with adrenaline, with Mollymauk’s irritation and discomfort raking through his mind like nails against a blackboard. Caleb could only be grateful, in a resigned, distant sort of way, that whatever the extent of their connection might be, it apparently did not oblige them to share hangovers.</p><p>Mollymauk was at the bar proper when Caleb reached the foot of the stairs. Caleb felt, rather than saw, the trepidation and...concern, of all things...spread through him, the knowledge that Mollymauk had seen him there.</p><p>Something churned in the pit of his stomach, and Caleb turned aside from the bar, heading instead for the quiet corner table they’d claimed the previous night. He got out his spellbook, and started leafing through it, hoping that Mollymauk would take that as the obvious signal it really ought to be.</p><p>Regrettably, Mollymauk did not appear to have much more of a sense for when someone was reading and should not be disturbed than the other students at Soltryce had been. Perhaps Caleb should have invested in a sign. It would not have saved him <em> very </em>much trouble, in the grand scheme of trouble he had got into, but it would at least reduce the minor irritations. Caleb felt him coming over before he ever heard the scrape of a chair, and peered suspiciously over the top of his book to see Mollymauk sitting on the other side of the table, his tarot cards in his hands. As Caleb watched, he shuffled them, and began laying out a pattern on the table.</p><p>“Do you always sleep like that?” Mollymauk asked, as pleasant and unconcerned as if they were discussing the day’s weather.</p><p>Caleb coughed, and tried to return his attention to his book. “Most nights, yes.”</p><p>“That can’t be good for you.”</p><p>“<em> Nein </em>- Ah. Not really. Did you-” Caleb shifted. “...dream of anything unusual?”</p><p>Mollymauk waved an airy hand, giving Caleb a flash of his fanned cards. “Oh, I never remember my dreams. Prefer it that way. Pick a card?”</p><p>Caleb blinked at him. “A-?”</p><p>“A card. Pick one.”</p><p>The fan of cards was thrust under Caleb’s nose. Picking one was, apparently, the only way to make Mollymauk take his hand away, so Caleb did.</p><p>The card in question showed an image of a pair of men - one a scarred, bald human, the other a lanky half-elf with long, ashen hair - performing some kind of juggling act, three staves in the air between them, in various stages of mid-throw.</p><p>Mollymauk gave a soft little hum at the sight of it.</p><p>“Three of wands. That one can mean a lot of things - all good,” he added quickly, although he felt...confused, almost. Had there been a card laid out already for him to pick, that Caleb had missed? “But the main thrust of it is...generosity. Partnership. A fair deal, conducted fairly. Does that sound good to you, Caleb?”</p><p>Caleb blinked. Was this...was he reading too much into this, or… “I...suppose that would depend on what was meant by partnership,” he said slowly. “I- Mollymauk, are you propositioning me?”</p><p>Mollymauk paused. A considering look flitted over his face, though whatever it was, it didn’t extend deep enough for Caleb to feel it through the bond. “...I’m not ruling it out. But let’s talk about that when we’re sure that consummating this thing won’t leave us stuck with each other for the rest of our lives, hm?”</p><p>“I- Ah- That is...I was not…”</p><p>Something in Mollymauk’s smile dimmed a little. “...Well, the offer’s open, if you’re ever in a position where you want to take it. But, so long as we <em> are </em>connected this way, for an hour or for as long as it takes to get us disconnected...we might as well try not to make each other any more miserable than we absolutely have to, wouldn’t you agree?”</p><p>Caleb’s heart sank. “I...I am sorry, I cannot...cannot actually control my nightmares, Mollymauk. It is...unfortunate...that your sleep was disturbed, but-”</p><p>“You aren’t especially kind to yourself, are you?”</p><p>This was, Caleb felt, a bit much to accept from someone he had known less than a week, and who had no idea just how cruel to himself Caleb would need to be before it stopped being deserved.</p><p>“That’s...rather a personal question, Mollymauk,” he managed, rather clumsily.</p><p>Mollymauk’s smile twitched up at one corner, rueful. “We’re already living half in each other’s heads. I’d say we passed ‘personal’ a while back.</p><p>“All the more reason to hang on to whatever privacy we have left,” Caleb said shortly. “I- I will try to avoid disturbing you with my own troubles, but sometimes, I will- will be troubled, or unhappy, and there is no- no fixing it. With any luck, Jester will come down with a way to separate us, and that- that will be the end of this little...adventure.”</p><p>Mollymauk gave a vague sort of hum, belied by the faint little stab of irritation Caleb could feel through the bond.</p><p>“Well, then it’ll stop being <em> my </em>problem so much, but tell me, Caleb-”</p><p>“If it stops being your problem,” Caleb bit off harshly. “Then it stops being your <em> business </em>.”</p><p>It was more than just a stab of annoyance he felt from Mollymauk now, but the tiefling’s face didn’t show any hint of it. He’d gathered up his cards and was shuffling them again. Did he do that just for something to occupy his hands, or was he planning on offering a full reading next?</p><p>Caleb knew he was being unreasonable - he wouldn’t have wanted, if he were an ordinary, innocent person, or even if he was someone like Mollymauk, who had left both ‘ordinary’ and ‘innocent’ behind very early in their acquaintance, to be forced to endure an insidious emotional link with someone like Caleb either - but at the same time, this was...a knife against Caleb’s throat, that Mollymauk suddenly held so much power over him, could find Caleb wherever he went, with or without his amulet, could send Caleb so easily back to the asylum, just with the wrong word in the wrong ear...his mouth felt dry, and he flattened his hands out on the table to stop them from shaking. He forced his attention back to his book.</p><p>Mollymauk was annoyed, still, and...something else, more complicated, that might’ve been second-cousin to pity. Caleb hunched his shoulders. He didn’t deserve Mollymauk’s pity, and he didn’t want it either- </p><p>“Oh, will you just <em> stop </em>!” </p><p>Caleb looked up. Mollymauk’s tail was lashing like Frumpkin’s in a temper.</p><p>“Stop what?” he asked, pointedly and deliberately obtuse in the stubborn, cussed way that had driven his classmates mad with frustration.</p><p>“Look,” Mollymauk said, with a poor effort at his usual faintly sleazy urbanity. “I don’t...you were right, it <em> isn’t </em>my business whether you choose to flagellate yourself on your off-time. Can think of more enjoyable ways to do it, if you’re interested, but if not...I’m not going to go rooting around in your personal issues. They’re called that for a reason, and I’ll stay out of yours if you’ll stay out of mine. Unfortunately, just at the moment, that isn’t an option, so could you please stop, take a few deep breaths, and repeat after me: Not everything is my fault.”</p><p>Caleb stared down at the pages of his spellbook. Not everything was his fault. Maybe not everything, but enough things that the suggestion was- was laughable. And what would Mollymauk know about it, anyway? They had known each other a week, and this- This right here was why they needed to separate and never speak of this again as soon as possible, because if Mollymauk ever, even for a second, caught a hint of what Caleb was hiding...then this would all be over. And they would all know. And Caleb-</p><p>Caleb would be on his own again.</p><p>He could <em> feel </em> Mollymauk’s frustration and annoyance and, <em> yes </em>, unearned, unwanted pity in a distant corner of his mind, and hunched his shoulders, drawing up his spellbook almost to his chin and hoping that would be enough to convince Mollymauk that, whatever he might think, Caleb neither wanted nor required his interference. And, in a few minutes, Jester would come down to breakfast, and then Caleb’s guilt would stop bothering Mollymauk at all.</p><p>He was more than halfway through by the time Jester, Fjord and Beauregard made it down, and all he had really concluded was that there were no additional dicks in his spellbook, other than the one that had turned up in there last night, that was probably Nott playing a prank on him. It wasn’t her usual style of prank - they tended to involve more sticky alchemical substances than this, and generally she at least left his spellbooks alone unless she really wanted to learn something - but it hadn’t overlapped with any of his sigils, and other than that it just wasn’t worth worrying about.</p><p>“So, I have good news, and I have...less good news,” were the first words out of Jester’s mouth, as she threw herself down onto the bench beside Caleb. “The good news is, this probably counts as my first-ever wedding as a cleric of the Traveller, which is, you know, pretty cool, and it can only make me a better cleric, so that’s good for all of us, right?”</p><p>“Congratulations,” Mollymauk said, with a bright, easy, <em> lying </em> smile - Caleb could still feel his frustration through the bond, as clear as anything, but there wasn’t a trace of it in that smile. “I imagine you’ll be an even <em> better </em>cleric once you’ve performed your first divorce, so why don’t we get on with that before Nott decides on a more permanent way to dispose of her unwanted carnie-in-law?”</p><p>“She wouldn’t actually do that,” Caleb muttered. She had, after all, suggested bringing Mollymauk straight back afterwards.</p><p>Mollymauk shrugged. “Best not to extend the temptation, then. So, divorce? Or is it still early enough we can call it an annulment? Never was too clear on the difference, but whichever one you can do will be perfectly fine with me.”</p><p>“It’s an annulment,” Caleb muttered.</p><p>Jester bit her lip. “Yes...listen, about that…”</p><p>Caleb didn’t know if the cold chill of trepidation down the back of his neck had belonged to him or Mollymauk to begin with, but he felt it all the same.</p><p>“Idon’tactuallyknowwhatthedivorceritualfortheTravelleris,” Jester blurted out, all in one breath so that it took a moment for Caleb to take the words apart.</p><p>“But-” he started, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Are- Aren’t you his cleric? Did- I...am not familiar with the worship of the Traveller, but were you not taught how to conduct these rituals…”</p><p>“I...am <em> self-taught </em> !” Jester said, with forced and desperate brightness, “But...you know, I talk to him, and he hasn’t talked back much recently, but maybe he’s just busy and he’ll come back soon with the ritual for me, and then we can, you know, divorce you or whatever…or, you know, maybe it’ll be like Astraea and Vitaliya in <em> Her Lady to Love </em> and by the time we find one, maybe you won't <em> want </em>to get divorced.”</p><p>Caleb cast a doubtful look at Mollymauk, who was giving him an equally dubious look in return.</p><p>“I...ah...I really doubt that is going to happen, Jester,” he said quickly. “But- I’m sorry, you really have no idea how we could...or...there must be someone in this town qualified to perform marriage rites, could we not go to them?”</p><p>“We could ask,” Fjord put in, “But I don’t know if it’d work, or whether you need the right kind of divorce for the ceremony, or…”</p><p>“What ceremony would that be?” Mollymauk asked, and Caleb could feel how close he was to laughter, a wild edge of hysteria brushing against Caleb’s mind and making him tense instinctively at the intrusion. “I don’t remember there being much of a ceremony involved. Did I miss something? Caleb, you’d tell me if there was an actual wedding ceremony and I missed it, wouldn’t you?”</p><p>A tickle of...something...through the bond, and Caleb frowned. For a moment, he couldn’t identify it, but then...Mollymauk’s tail was twitching, the same way Frumpkin’s did when he was feeling playful. Caleb...honestly didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that. This- This wasn’t <em> funny </em>.</p><p>Fjord coughed. “I just...I don’t know. Maybe it’ll work. We can ask, anyway, but...I never heard of the Traveller before Jester here came along, so...if that doesn’t work, then I don’t know what you’re gonna do.”</p><p>Caleb didn’t either. He cleared his throat. “Let’s…let’s just wait and try this, first. If it doesn’t pan out, then...then we can figure something out from there.”</p><p>It did not, in fact, pan out.</p><p>There was a little Temple of All Gods in Alfield - all gods accepted within the Empire, that was - as the town was too small for anything more to be worth the expense of building. The town’s elderly cleric of Erathis had been among those killed in the gnolls’ attack, but the young cleric of Pelor who had been his second was still alive, although no more helpful, and the queue to get into see her, behind all the people of Alfield wanting to make arrangements for the funerals of friends, loved ones, neighbours and strangers alike, was long enough that Caleb was half-afraid the rest of the group would have already collected their bounty and got underway before they reached the front of the line.</p><p>“Divorce?” The cleric squinted at them over her round glasses. “I...we are rather busy at the moment, can this not wait?”</p><p>Caleb shifted awkwardly, rubbing at his arms. He found himself wondering, in a distant sort of way, what his parents would have made of this - their son standing in a provincial temple, not unlike the one he’d attended every week in his childhood, trying to obtain a no-questions-asked divorce less than a day after what passed for his wedding. “We...ah...we intend to leave town in the immediate future, so...no, not really?”</p><p>The cleric blinked. “I...I see. You are leaving...together, but you want a divorce?”</p><p>“It’s...an unfortunate situation,” Mollymauk cut in smoothly. “You must’ve seen it before. These workplace romances...they never end well. Things just- The moment we brought our personal lives to work everything just fell apart. We’ve been meaning to get the paperwork done for a while, but, you know, with everything that’s been going on lately…”</p><p>The cleric looked faintly upset at that - she was younger than Caleb, Caleb noticed. Or at least, younger than Caleb appeared. She was probably younger than Mollymauk, too - this must have been one of her first postings. Romantic enough still, perhaps, not to have done this very often.</p><p>“I- I see. Well, I will...make the attempt. Under what god were you married?”</p><p>Caleb’s heart sank.</p><p>“We...ah…” He hadn’t considered this part. “Is that- Is that relevant?”</p><p>Mollymauk, once again, was ready with a steady line of bullshit and a bright smile, and a sharp-edged prickle of...was that <em> glee </em>...that Caleb could feel, unwanted, through the bond. </p><p>“What my hopefully-soon-to-be-ex-husband means to say is,” he interrupted. “We were travelling outside the Empire when we got married, and...you know, Port Danali being what it is, we weren’t altogether sober at the time…”</p><p>“Are you…” the cleric had gone pale. “Are you saying you don’t...don’t <em> remember </em>which god you called upon at your wedding?”</p><p>“Yes,” Caleb said dully, since going along with Mollymauk’s story was, at least, less likely to see them imprisoned for idol-worship than any <em> other </em>explanation they could give. “Yes, that is exactly what we are saying.”</p><p>“Then...I really am sorry, but I don’t think I can help you,” the cleric said, with an awkward smile. “You...well, you know how it is. What one god brings together, another cannot put asunder. Maybe- Maybe you should go back to Port Danali, ask around. You do remember <em> where </em>you were married, I take it?”</p><p>This time, Caleb could identify the tickling edge of mischief in Mollymauk’s mind before the tiefling spoke. He put his hand to his mouth and turned to Caleb.</p><p>“Well, come to think of it...do you remember, dear? Where was it, again…”</p><p>“It was...pretty hard to forget...” Caleb said awkwardly, hunching deeper into his coat.</p><p>“That little temple with the hot springs, maybe?” Mollymauk prodded. “Or...no, that was one of the ones we got thrown out of…”</p><p>“I’m quite sure we will figure it out,” Caleb said through gritted teeth. “But I am sure that the priestess has many other things to do today, what with <em> all the funeral arrangements </em> , and <em> everything </em>…”</p><p>Mollymauk heaved a theatrical sigh. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. Here,” he added, producing a handful of gold coins from an inside pocket of his ludicrous coat and dropping them carelessly into the startled priestess’s hands. “Donation. Spread it around, see if you can’t do something for the families of the dead. The last thing anyone in this town needs is extra funeral expenses. If there’s anything left over, maybe help with the rebuilding…”</p><p>The cleric blinked. “I...that is very generous of you.”</p><p>“Least I can do,” Mollymauk said, with an airy wave of the hand, and, Caleb was shocked to realise, meant every word of it. “Well, we’ll- ah, we’ll just be going, then. Get out of your hair. Thank you, for your time. Come on, Caleb.”</p><p>By the time they got back to the Feed and Mead, Nott was awake, and she, along with the rest of their party, had already cleared out looking for Bryce to collect their earnings from yesterday. It wasn’t hard to get pointed in their direction, after that. They could probably have got there even faster by admitting <em> which </em>god had been invoked in their...Caleb didn’t know what else to call it but a wedding, although it hadn’t looked like any wedding he’d ever attended...but then they’d have had to break out of prison again, and probably not get paid into the bargain, and Nott didn’t deserve that sort of trouble.</p><p>“Hey, Zemnian guy!” Beauregard called from over by Bryce’s desk as Caleb came in. “You know good words that, like, sound cool in Zemnian, right?”</p><p>Caleb blinked. “Ah- Nein?”</p><p>For some reason, this was an acceptable response, since Beauregard turned straight back to Bryce and announced.</p><p>“We are...<em> the Mighty Nein </em>.”</p><p>“Nein?” Jester repeated.</p><p>Fjord shrugged. “Yeah, why not? There’s one, two, three, four…”</p><p>Mollymauk glanced over at Caleb, radiating confusion so obviously that Caleb didn’t actually <em> need </em>an empathic bond to work it out. “I feel we deserve a vote in this!”</p><p>“Tough shit,” Beauregard snapped back. “We need a team name if we’re going to get our  money, so suck it up.”</p><p>“We have to leave a paper trail?” A pulse of something like fear through the bond. “Is that a thing that actually has to happen?”</p><p>“Think so,” Fjord admitted, “‘Least, if we want to get paid it does.”</p><p>Bryce nodded. “The Mighty Nein,” they repeated.</p><p>“I can buy that,” Mollymauk agreed.</p><p>Of course, then the spelling needed to be sorted out - the Zemni Fields weren’t that far outside the Marrow Valley, just on the other side of the Labenda Swamp, but ‘the Mighty Nine’ just sounded boring, even if there were only six of them. Seven, Caleb supposed, if Yasha ever came back - but they got paid at the end of it, and a recommendation for an inn in Zadash that they might, now, be able to afford, and so it took until they were all aboard the cart and rumbling out of Alfield before anyone thought to ask:<br/>
“So, you two get split up yet, or are we going to have to live with your bullshit wedding drama all the way to Zadash?”</p><p>“<em> You’re </em> the one asking for details about the Tealeaf-Widogast honeymoon tour, Beau!” Mollymauk shot back, without so much as missing a beat, and Caleb, sitting in the back of the cart with Frumpkin curled up purring in his lap, nearly choked at the sudden, wild thought of just what Una and Leofric Ermendrud, respectable, serious-minded citizens of the Empire that they had been, would have thought of their son bringing home Mollymauk Tealeaf, presenting him proudly as their new child-in-law.</p><p>Then again, even at seventeen, bright and polished and respectable...Bren Ermendrud might have been more worth looking at than Caleb was, but he could not imagine Mollymauk having time for either of them. Which was a ridiculous thing to feel this hollow about, when Caleb had never wanted this, and Bren...well, if Molly would never have looked at Bren Ermendrud, Bren...his eyes might have lingered, attracted by that same brightness which was to Caleb almost blinding, but Bren had a purpose, a duty, that certainty which had reduced everything he had ever loved to ashes. He would have torn his eyes away before too long, and dismissed all thought of Mollymauk from his mind.</p><p>“I take it the priestess couldn’t help you, then?” Fjord drawled, twisting around to lean en elbow on the side of the cart.</p><p>Caleb shook his head. “Nein. Jester, are you <em> sure </em>you don’t know?”</p><p>“I’ve never had to <em> do </em> a <em> divorce </em> before!” Jester huffed. “I mean...this was also my first wedding, and I didn’t even know I was <em> doing </em>it!”</p><p>“Are we…” Caleb swallowed. “Are we sure you did? I- I do not mean any offence, but...there were two clerics in the room when the- when it happened. Did Shakäste ever mention which god he follows?”</p><p>Jester’s mouth opened, then closed again. “I- <em> No </em> ! No! We’re a team! If <em> anyone </em>is going to be marrying any of you, it should be me!”</p><p>“I mean,” Beauregard put in, “Shakäste was the one who fucking <em> told </em>us what just happened, so...might’ve been him or it might not. I don’t know. He headed off pretty quick before we could ask any questions, so...I’d believe he did it.”</p><p>“He didn’t seem like the sort of asshole who’d just up and leave, though, once he realised they weren’t actually a thing,” Fjord pointed out, in a reasonable sort of voice.</p><p>Nott’s eyes were cat-yellow slits between mask and hood. “We could hunt him down and ask!” she said menacingly, fingering her crossbow.</p><p>“We wouldn’t find him, though,” Jester cut in. “He’s like...like the wind. Or the Traveller! I don’t think we could find him if he didn’t want to be found.”</p><p>Mollymauk’s tail lashed. “No appreciation for challenges, any of you!”</p><p>“I just want to get to Zadash!” Beau said flatly. “That’s it. You want to run off and get divorced, that’s your business, but we’re going to Zadash.”</p><p>Caleb glanced around. It was- It was only sensible to expect that, of course. Their group was still very new, and it was not as though he had not thought of leaving. “I…” he stopped. “I am not sure I would know how to find him if I tried.”</p><p>He would’ve been able to, once. Trent, once, had deposited him, Astrid and Eadwulf on the side of a mountain, and told them to track a fleeing rebel across the whole mountain range in the space of a night. They had found him inside four hours. Caleb still remembered the spill of blood across the snow, the ashes blown in his face by the driving winds as the body burned to cover their tracks.</p><p>But that had been a long time ago. He couldn’t do it now, not with the resources at his disposal, and there was no guarantee that Shakäste would be any more able to help with their situation than Jester or the priestess at Alfield had been.</p><p>They might...there might not actually be a way out of this. Caleb wasn’t even sure Jester’s god <em> existed </em>, and if that was their best hope for a divorce...he might be facing the rest of his life technically, unwillingly married to Mollymauk Tealeaf.</p><p>“Zadash it is, then,” Mollymauk said cheerfully. And the worst of it was, he <em> was </em>cheerful. Caleb could feel it through the bond, touched at the corners as it was by annoyance, a feeling like sunlight through shutters, warm and bright enough to suffuse Caleb’s whole mind if he was only fool enough to let it. </p><p>He- He <em> did </em>realise, didn’t he, what they were dealing with? What he had, through no fault of his own, bound himself to? If he had known, if he had even imagined what sort of man Caleb really was...Mollymauk might have a soft heart for lame dogs, but even Nott, who had been travelling with Caleb for months, who relied on him as much as he did on her...even she couldn’t forgive that. What would it be like, Caleb wondered, to feel Mollymauk’s contempt and revulsion, the same way he could feel the warmth of his happiness now?</p><p>Something twisted in the pit of his stomach. He ought to run, he knew, but- But Nott was here, and she hadn’t cast him out yet. But if he ran now, where was he running to? But no matter how far he ran, that tie would still be there, like a leash.</p><p>Caleb rubbed his arms, and held his peace, and tried to pretend he could not feel the weight of the choke-chain about his neck.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I should like to take this opportunity to apologise for my Caleb POV - I have never written it before, and so the ratio of self-loathing angst to silliness is tilted very much towards the former, and it isn't quite comfortable yet. Hopefully I will improve with more writing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yasha caught back up with them in Zadash, in a bathhouse, and not one second too soon. Gods, but Molly had missed her. He always did. He’d never actually <em> said </em>so, because Yasha would do what Yasha needed to do whether Molly missed her or not, and making her feel bad about it wouldn’t make any difference except making Yasha that bit less happy, but that didn’t mean the feeling wasn’t there.</p><p>It had been…one <em> hell </em>of a couple of days since Alfield, and honestly Molly was looking forward to telling Yasha about every bit of it - their new, mostly-accidental team name; the run-in with what had to be either the best or worst bandits Molly had ever met in his life, and how they had dealt with them; the Enchanters Pumat Sol, all however many there really were of him, because Molly was not at all convinced that the count stopped at four - except that Jester got there first.</p><p>“Did you see what happened in Alfield?” she asked excitedly, shifting over to sit next to Asha in the tub.</p><p>Yahsa gave her a nervy, sidelong look. “Uh...yeah?”</p><p>“It was us, we killed them all,” Jester said, mock-solemnly, before a grin broke through and she added. “And I performed my first wedding as a cleric of the Traveller which was, you know, pretty cool, except I didn’t know I was doing it, and they weren’t planning on getting married, and the Traveller hasn’t got back to me yet about how divorces work, so Caleb and Molly are married now.”</p><p>“Not <em> actually </em>married,” Molly cut in quickly, before Yasha could react. “It’s not...not like...well, you know. It was a random magical accident. Neither of us agreed to anything.”</p><p>Yasha looked troubled. <em> Shit </em>. Shit, this was exactly why Molly had wanted to be the one to tell her everything for himself. To make it clear that, whatever the trappings were, this was just a magical accident. An inconvenient magical accident, which had left him feeling Caleb at the edge of his mind, tense and wary even now, submerged to the chin in warm water and with no immediate threat in sight. But still, at the end of the day, a magical accident, with no more significance than that one time the carnival’s old arcanist had conjured a rain of fish inside the big top instead of dancing lights, if rather more serious consequences than the whole troupe being stuck eating increasingly rotten fish for a month until they were all entirely sick of the taste.</p><p>“That...is not always a requirement,” she said in a low voice, her eyes dropping towards the water. </p><p>Molly shrugged. “‘Married’ means what people say it does. And <em> I </em>say, no vows, no wedding, so...let’s just call it an accident, all right? Good, glad that’s settled.”</p><p>Nott was glaring at him again. Nott had done rather a lot of that, since Alfield. Molly wasn’t sure if it was because she suddenly thought of him as her wicked stepparent or if she thought he was going to get between her and Caleb somehow - something Molly wasn’t sure he could’ve done with a crowbar, even if he’d been that way inclined. Caleb was, as it turned out, pretty under all that grime, the deliberate attempt to make as unappealing a first impression as possible, and Molly <em> had </em>felt a curl of something too faint to be called active interest, but definite enough to be flattering through the bond when he’d stepped naked out of the changing room. If Molly had met him like this that night in Trostenwald, he might’ve considered making a move, but...no. Even without the bond it had been obvious that Caleb had far too much going on to be receptive to an offer from Molly, and with it...with it, Molly had quickly realised, he wouldn’t know how to reach out a friendly hand to touch Caleb without having it burnt to a stump.</p><p>The conversation took another turn after that, first to the various job offers they’d received, and the unfortunate necessity of attention and publicity. For a moment, Molly couldn’t tell if the sharp spike of terror he’d felt at <em> that </em> idea had been his or Caleb’s. He’d never had any problem being visible in his life before - quite the opposite. From the moment Molly opened his eyes, before he’d even re-learned how to talk, he’d stuck out like a sore thumb in any place the circus happened to be travelling - purple tieflings weren’t exactly something you saw <em> every </em>day, especially not if they also happened to be handsome, dashing and good with a sword or two - and then from the moment he’d been aware enough to do something about it, he’d just thrown on bright colours and costume jewellery and as many tattoos as his skin would take. If he tried to say he was nervous about being spotted he’d be laughed straight out of the bathhouse. Fortunately, he wasn’t the only member of their party with a bit of an aversion to the idea. Put like that, it even sounded altruistic - nobody had ever looked at Mollymauk Tealeaf and seen someone trying to hide, and that was just the way Molly wanted to keep it, thanks.</p><p>There was no reason anyone should think they knew him here. If he was going to be recognised anywhere it would be up north, near the forests where he’d been found, and the circus had passed that way often enough. Purple tieflings were uncommon, but that might be an advantage all on its own - people looked at the skin and the horns, not at the face - and he was pretty sure he could spin a convincing enough line of bullshit to give himself the benefit of the doubt, at least long enough to get out of town and promise himself never to come back.</p><p>He could feel Caleb’s eyes on him now, and when he looked around Caleb was sunk in water past his nose, squinting suspiciously at Molly from where his eyes and the top of his head just stuck out above the water, like the world’s most paranoid ginger crocodile. Molly grinned back at him, and splashed his tail in Caleb’s general direction, just to bother him, before catching Yasha’s eye, and quickly pretended to be far more interested than he actually was in the bathhouse staff coming in to refresh the water.</p><p>He and Yasha didn’t get a moment alone until they - the group of them who’d gone to the lawmaster’s office and had to be talked out of just handing over an already-pretty-ripe manticore head and running, as if that wasn’t a guaranteed way to get themselves kicked out of Zadash and banned from ever coming back before they found out where in Zadash you went for a good time when you had money in your pocket and no sense of shame to hold you back - got back to the Leaky Tap to find that neither Caleb nor Jester had made it back yet from whatever it was they had to do in the Tri-Spires that was frustrating Caleb so badly that it was taking actual effort to remember that he, Molly, <em> wasn’t </em>being driven up the wall by the apparently many obstacles of walking Jester in to pick up a care package from her mum. They hadn’t even made it into the Tri-Spires yet, and it wasn’t that long a walk. Did they not admit tieflings or not admit anyone who fell below a certain baseline level of cleanliness? Because in Molly’s experience it could’ve been either, but only one of those was likely to cause Molly any trouble.</p><p>Molly...could’ve done without that knowledge, if he was honest.</p><p>He was- It had been a long time since he had to worry about thoughts, feelings, impulses that weren’t his own, before all this. Not like it had come up all that often with the circus, and if the cold voice in the back of his head hissed imprecations whenever he got near Kylre...well, Molly just hadn’t spent that much time around Kylre. There were plenty of other people in the circus to hang around with, after all.</p><p>Now, he was stuck on the road with Caleb <em> fucking </em>Widogast, feeling every twinge of annoyance and frustration and terror. Brighter things too, from time to time, but even they were weighed down with that edge of panic, as if he didn’t quite trust his own happiness not to turn to ashes in his hands, and Molly-</p><p>Molly didn’t know what to <em> do </em> about it. Because, clearly, someone had to do something, and as the only person who knew what an absolute flaming hellpit Caleb’s mind was and was not Caleb, it looked like the job had fallen to him whether he wanted it or not. For extra incentive, Caleb’s misery would be a bitter note in Molly’s mind until he <em> did </em>do something about it. </p><p>It wasn’t that Molly didn’t get scared. It was just that generally, when Molly was scared of something, it was something that was right in front of him and currently trying to tear his face off, like, say...zombies. Zombies were worth getting scared over. Gnolls. People sneaking up on them while they were asleep at camp. Gustav being stuck for the rest of his life working off a debt that wasn’t even properly his own in some dreary little town, locked in a cell until his eyes glazed over and there was nothing left of the energy, the brightness, the effervescent love of life he’d gathered about himself like a second skin. His sword, shining with a radiant light, and the whispers of that cold voice in the back of his head that belonged to that other person, the one Molly wished he had left buried in the northern forests two years ago.</p><p>But those were all things he could <em> do </em> something about. Kill the zombies, kill the gnolls, try to make enough money that they could go back that way and get Gustav out, get another tattoo and a few more piercings to mark this body even more deeply as his own. He didn’t know where to <em> start </em>with something like this.</p><p>And, of course, because he’d never been able to keep a secret worth a damn from her, that all came spilling out onto Yasha the moment he tried to explain to her what was going on with this connection thing between them.</p><p>Yasha listened, the little furrow between her brows growing deeper with every word.</p><p>“-Just-! How does he <em> live </em> like this?” Molly finished. “I’m only getting it second-hand and <em> I </em> can barely live with it! It’s like if he feels happy for even a second, he has to punish himself for it, because every time I get anything from him that <em> isn’t </em> a fucking nightmare, the guilt comes back twice as strong the moment he realises he might actually be having a nice time for once! I just- I mean, I get it, or I think I get it, I mean...who do we know who <em> isn’t </em> a bit fucked up, but that’s not- None of the others ever- ever forced me to put up with their baggage taking up space <em> in my head </em>, even when they wanted me to help with it!”</p><p>“It doesn’t sound as though that was his choice either, though,” Yasha pointed out, infuriatingly reasonable.</p><p>Molly sighed and slumped against the wall. “I know,” he muttered sullenly. “I just...you don’t need to tell me it was my fault. If I hadn’t kissed him in the first place, we’d’ve probably never noticed there was anything wrong with those rings. What sort of awful, over-attached people <em> want </em> to have to feel their partner’s every emotion all the time, anyway? This is <em> torture </em>.”</p><p>Yasha shrugged. “I would have given a great deal, that day,” she said softly. “To have been able to take the wound that killed Zuala from her.”</p><p>“But-” Molly’s tail lashed. “That...Yash. You know that wouldn’t- wouldn’t’ve stopped them, right? They were going to kill you too.”</p><p>“I know.” Yasha’s eyes flicked away. “I knew then, too. But I would have done it.”</p><p>Molly’s heart twisted in his chest. He- He couldn’t imagine it. Yasha dead and half a continent away, without him ever knowing she existed. He didn’t <em> want </em>to imagine it. He tried to picture something else instead, a world where she and Zuala could’ve escaped together, and it would have been the three of them in the circus, and not just they two, but the image wouldn’t come, the figure of Zuala just a shadow in the back of his mind. Yasha didn’t talk about her wife all that often. They’d known each other for months before she’d told him what she was collecting all those flowers for.</p><p>“This...isn’t that,” he said after a moment. “I met him a week ago, Yash, and while I’ll admit that’s never stopped me before...look at him. Do <em> you </em>think that’s a man who’s in any place for something like this? This is very definitely a ‘look, don’t touch’ sort of situation!”</p><p>Yasha nodded solemnly. “A lot of marriages begin that way,” she said, so seriously that she <em> had </em>to be trolling him.</p><p>“Still not a marriage,” Molly reminded her. “The vows are the important bit. Who was it that told me- <em> You </em>told me that!”</p><p>Yasha’s mouth twitched up a little at one corner. “You know my tribe’s marriage ceremony didn’t include vows in the same way they do here. The Skyspear made the decisions, and we...were expected to abide by them.”</p><p>“That’s what makes them the important bit! They’re the part which says you <em> chose </em> this! Well, I <em> didn’t </em> choose this, and I’m not- That means it only matters insofar as it has unexpected magical side-effects that can’t be removed except with one <em> very </em>specific ceremony none of us knows yet.”</p><p>“This...ceremony...being a divorce?” Yasha asked, and, yep, definitely trolling him now. People thought Yasha was deadly serious, just because she was quiet and stoic and wore her pain like armour, the same way Caleb did, although with less of a stink. They were wrong. Yasha, under the right circumstances, could be the single funniest person Molly had ever met, and that was a <em> lot </em>of people for having only been alive two years.</p><p>“<em> Technically </em> , yes,” Molly allowed, “But only in the same way that me kissing Caleb on the forehead because he was having some kind of trauma episode counts as a wedding.” He sighed. “They couldn’t even be <em> nice </em> rings,” he muttered, “I mean, look at this! It’s downright <em> traditional </em>! If it wasn’t for the healing thing I’d never’ve gone for it!”</p><p>“Healing thing?” Yasha asked.</p><p>“It…” Molly waves a hand. “It’s supposed to help me heal better in fights. Caleb said something about maybe making it so I don’t lose so much blood every time I need to cast one of my creepy blood spells…” he paused, then added. “It happened again while you were away.”</p><p>Yasha’s eyes caught his. “Another…?”</p><p>“Yeah. I mean, it was useful, but…” he shuddered, trying not to think of that chill certainty, the way he had known, instinctively, what to do when his sword had burst into light. “Let’s...let’s hope this isn’t going to happen too often.”</p><p>“We are doing a lot more fighting now,” Yasha reminded him. “More than the circus ever did.”</p><p>“I noticed!”</p><p>The circus had had occasional trouble, with bandits or overzealous crownsguard, but most of the time they were too big a group to be an easy score and too poor to be worth the bother of robbing. The Nein were neither, which was...something of a mixed blessing, and also went out of their way to find trouble to get into even when it wasn’t after them directly, which definitely added a bit more excitement to Molly’s life. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell Yasha about their run-in with the Syphilis Bandits yet. Though, maybe he ought to polish that one up a bit before he did - it had the makings of a <em> great </em>tavern tale. Then again, who else but Yasha could provide an audience for that? He’d practiced his fortune-telling on her too, in the early days, before he’d got the hang of the patter, and if he could get a smile out of Yasha it’d be worth it.</p><p>He opened his mouth to launch into it, as an example of all the extra fighting they’d had to do lately-</p><p>And stopped dead, as a spike of honest hurt and anger shot through him, so sudden and so startling that it almost knocked him on his arse.</p><p>“Are- Are you okay?” Yasha asked, frowning at him.</p><p>Molly waved her off, forcing a grin. “Fine- Fine, just...this thing takes some getting used to.” The anger was still there, not as sharp now, but low and rolling like thunder, with the hurt underneath it like rain. Okay, so that was what ‘fuming’ felt like. Good to know, he wished he’d never been in a position to find that out.</p><p>“You mean…that was it? That was Caleb? You were...connected, just then?”</p><p>“Seems like we’re <em> always </em>connected,” Molly muttered. “Apparently whatever he’s been up to while not being let into the Tri-Spires got a bit more involved than any of us were expecting.”</p><p>“Are you going to talk to him about it?”</p><p>“No.” Molly straightened his coat, resisting the urge to pick at a loose thread - he needed to redo some of the embroidery around his right shoulder, it was getting worn out. “No, we’re...let’s just try to leave each other as much of our own business as we can keep, hm?”</p><p>He’d made his effort, in Alfield, to make this situation a bit easier on them both, and Caleb hadn’t exactly been receptive. Which was fine. Molly had been perfectly ready to just...not ask about whatever Caleb’s mysterious baggage was. You didn’t last long in a carnival without learning when not to ask about what people’s lives had been like before that. Granted, that had been part of what led to the Kylre situation in the first place, but hindsight, after all, was twenty-twenty. </p><p>Caleb was on his way back now. If Molly concentrated, he could probably narrow it down to the block, the street, the corner he was on. Not far away, wherever he was, and getting closer, and still angry, though starting, Molly thought, to cool off. Probably the crownsguard had gotten involved, though Caleb seemed to have avoided getting arrested, at least, which was better luck than Molly had expected him to have with the crownsguard in a posh area like the Tri-Spires, where as often as not they’d throw you in a cell just for the hell of it if they didn’t like the look of your face. Then again, Caleb was human. That could open a lot of doors just on its own, even if he hadn’t been able to use his magic to get past the guards at the gate for some reason.</p><p>Yasha was still watching him, with a dreadfully <em> concerned </em>look on her face, the same one she’d got after every time another of his abilities had shown up when they were still at the circus, and Molly had had no recourse but to find Bo and ask for access to something from the open secret that was Bo’s portable still. Excellent person to have around, Bo had been. Their new Beau was not nearly as congenial, and certainly didn’t go around giving out mostly-free booze.</p><p>“We should...probably head down,” Molly said awkwardly. “We’ll be heading back out to the sewers soon enough. What do you want to bet on what we’ll find down there? Lawmaster said there were webs. Only so many things that can be, and I’m betting most of them have too many legs for comfort…”</p><p>Yasha blinked. “...I...sort of assumed we all knew it was spiders,” she said awkwardly. “I don’t know what kind, but...if there are webs, then…”</p><p>“Oh, damn, you took my bet!” Molly clapped her shoulder, “Just for that, I’m going to say it’s something <em> cunningly disguised </em> as a spider. Maybe some form of cult? We’ve handled one of those already this week.” He remembered the lie he’d given Caleb, back in Alfield, before they’d known what sort of mess they were in and laughed to himself, just softly. Another of Yasha’s more amazing qualities, that: she wasn’t the sort of person who had to stop you and ask what the joke was when, sometimes, Molly just got the urge to break down laughing over some stray thought that wouldn’t make sense and wouldn’t be any fun at all if he tried to explain it out loud.</p><p>Instead, she just put a hand on Molly’s shoulder for a second, right over the nested moon and sun tattoo there, and gripped it for a few seconds, before the pair of them headed down to join their friends in the bar.</p><p>Of course, the same day they ended up seeing a bath for the first time since before Molly had left the carnival, they ended up heading down into the city sewers. He wished they’d come up with that plan <em> before </em>going to the bathhouse. On the other hand, what better excuse to go to the bathhouse twice in two days?  Not like they couldn’t afford it, flush as they were after everything that had happened on the road. And Molly wasn’t turning down any excuse for another trip to the bathhouse, with or without the rest of the Nein.</p><p>What they ended up finding in the sewers were rats and spiders. Not an entirely unexpected population makeup, for a sewer, though the scale was a bit of a surprise. Also the teleporting, and the poisonous gas wasn’t Molly’s favourite thing in the world either, and the less said about how thoroughly his coat was going to need cleaned, the better. Maybe he could go into the Invulnerable Vagrant wearing it in this state and get himself prestidigitated clean for free?</p><p>All told, though, Molly was feeling pretty pleased with their ragtag little group right up until he spotted Caleb making off with half their take on his own. He hadn’t even felt it, which on the one hand was good - they could at least hide <em> some </em> things from one another - but, on the other...there was a bit of skimming off the top, and then there was this. This was just <em> gratuitous </em>.</p><p>So Molly did what any sensible, well-adjusted person would do. He hung back, a little, as they were all filing out through the sewer grate, waiting for Nott to get far enough ahead that he wasn’t risking a crossbow bolt to the arse by doing this, and then gently, <em> socially </em>pinned Caleb to the wall.</p><p>Well. That was the plan, anyway.</p><p>The thing was-</p><p>The thing was, Molly had been expecting discomfort. He’d been paying attention to Caleb - to all of their new travelling-companions, really - for a while now, and he <em> knew </em>Caleb had a bit of a thing about touch. That had been sort of the idea. Make him uncomfortable, just enough to put him on the back foot. The gentlest possible punishment, because this sort of blatant thieving from the group was just...poison to any sort of team dynamic they were supposed to form.</p><p>He had <em> not </em> been expecting the riptide of panic, the choking terror, the part of his mind that braced itself for pain even knowing that it was <em> his </em> hand barring Caleb’s way, <em> his </em> shadow looming over him, and - almost worse for how invasive it was, for the awful wriggling feeling of shame at Molly’s knowing of it - the desperate pangs of a skin-hunger that made Molly’s own skin crawl with discomfort at the intensity of it, the <em> need </em>for some friendly touch even as every part of Caleb’s conscious mind recoiled from it as if he’d been presented with an unexpected viper.</p><p>From Caleb’s face, he’d never have known anything was wrong - he looked <em> uncomfortable </em>, sure, but just...ordinarily uncomfortable, the reaction Molly had been looking to provoke, not meeting Molly’s eyes but not at this level of absolute emotional crisis - but the bond...the bond didn’t let him keep that illusion.</p><p><em> Fuck </em>.</p><p>Molly flinched back like <em> he </em>was the one who’d panicked so hard it almost made him physically ill just feeling it brush up against his mind, taking two sharp steps back until he was almost on the other side of the tunnel entirely, though that was still pretty close quarters.</p><p>“Do you have a problem with me, Mollymauk?” Caleb’s voice was quite calm - or as close to calm as Caleb’s twitchiness ever got - and Molly stared at him, wondering how the man could talk like that when Molly could still <em> feel </em>the aftershocks of that moment’s panic crashing through him.</p><p>“I...yeah,” he said after a moment, and shit, this would’ve sounded so much better the way he’d seen it going. How was it that he’d meant to put Caleb on the back foot and ended up there himself? “I’m…” he straightened a little, and crossed his arms, trying to recapture some of the flair he was pretty sure he’d had at the start of this evening, even if he’d seriously miscalculated somewhere along the way. “I’m <em> fine </em> if you skim something off the top,” he said, with his best attempt at suavity. “That’s fair. But be <em> clever </em>about it. Just distribute...sixty, seventy percent of what you find? ‘Kay?”</p><p>He still had some options from this distance, at least, he thought, and smiled his widest, toothiest smile, the one that put all his fangs on full display that he’d brought out at the circus whenever he was dealing with a particularly pushy patron, or when they’d had him play the demon one time they’d been touring <em> The Terrible Tinker of Tal'Dorei </em>.</p><p>Nothing. Not even a flicker of alarm. Molly could almost feel Caleb’s heart slowing to a steady resting beat now, and this time, the guilt was almost certainly all his own.</p><p>“And...that is all?” How was it, Molly wondered, with a faintly hysteric edge to the thought, that Caleb sounded <em> less </em>calm now than he had during that electric, terrified moment before Molly had pulled away?</p><p>“Yeah,” he said, a little shakily, “Yeah, I, uh, I think that’s everything. I get that last time the magic items got passed out, you lost out on that fire-glove, but there <em> is </em> such a thing as subtlety, you know. At least make it <em> look </em>like you’re not taking more than your share.”</p><p>“That-” Caleb looked faintly nervous now, but that- that was almost a good sign, right? During the worst of it, he’d seemed...almost wiped blank, so showing nerves was <em> something </em>, at least. “Mollymauk, I have no intention of keeping this.”</p><p>It was the truth, or close enough. Whether that had <em> always </em>been the plan...well, Molly had meant what he’d said.</p><p>“I believe you. Come on. Jester said something about going to the Pillow Trove afterwards. Did she mention if it had baths?”</p><p>“I- <em> Ja </em>, probably.” Caleb sounded almost punch-drunk. “I- I am not sure they will let us in, though. They would not let me in, the first time, though I was much cleaner then than I am now…”</p><p>“Only one way to find out,” Molly rested the inside edge of one scimitar on his shoulder, and wondered if he should apologise. It wasn’t exactly a habit he’d formed. Not that he hadn’t screwed up plenty at the circus, but not- not like this. And in the circus, they’d all known that words were cheap and bullshit was cheaper, so if he’d hurt someone or wronged someone, there would be something he could <em> do </em>to make it up. Some job he could take over for a week or two, some favour they needed done that would make things square.</p><p>Caleb stocked up on ink and paper yesterday, so he didn’t need that, and <em> buying </em>forgiveness had never sat quite right with Molly anyway. Caleb was fiercely resistant to the idea of anyone but him touching his ragged old coat, even though it could clearly do with mending in a few places. And, so long as they were in Zadash, and gods alone knew how long that was going to be, offering to take a double watch shift so Caleb could get a bit more sleep was off the table too. Molly shook himself. Well, he’d think of something.</p><p>Caleb was still watching him warily from the other side of the tunnel, and...all right, that made sense. Molly wouldn’t want to turn his back on someone who’d made him feel like that either. <em> Shit </em>, he had better come up with that ‘something’ sooner rather than later.</p><p>As it turned out, the Pillow Trove had to wait as, even with a funny moustache stuck on over its mandibles, courtesy of Jester, it was still, very obviously, a giant, rather mangled, spider that had probably eaten quite a lot of crownsguard and smugglers to get up to that size in the first place. Which meant that, first of all, they had to go and collect their pay for killing it, utterly fail to get extra pay for either all the Crownsguard armour they’d retrieved or the tragic loss of two fictional compatriots down in the sewers, and then traipse back to the Leaky Tap to get washed up because, as it turned out, Caleb was right on the money about whether or not they’d be let in now, when they were all fresh out of the sewers and smelling like...well, like a whole city’s accumulated shit, rot and spider-guts. Molly’s coat hadn’t got the worst of it, at least, just the hems stained, though his boots were filthy to the calves. Dirt wasn’t anything new, and water was often at a premium with the carnival, but sewage was a new one on Molly, and he couldn’t say he was exactly keen on the effects. Still, he’d managed to get himself scrubbed decently clean and most of the worst of the stains out - the lye soap that was all the inn had was <em> hell </em> on silk, but still a step up from sewage - before Fjord’s hammering on the washroom door to demand to know whether he was done yet finally drove him out. Not that Molly hadn’t <em> considered </em> staying in a bit longer, because caving in to pressure never ended well, but the water had been lukewarm to start with and was cold now, and he <em> did </em>need to fix the embroidery on his coat unless he wanted to have to redo the whole thing at some point on the road.</p><p>He’d barely got the needle threaded when the door slid ajar. No creak of floorboards, no scuff of boots. Nott’s little hooded head poked around the door, her yellow eyes glowing in the darkness, before she crept, slow and careful, across the floor towards Fjord’s pack, not even trying to stay out of sight beyond the basics of sticking to patches of darker shadow, and that...really wasn’t going to work on Molly. All right, people without darkvision tended to forget about people who did, but Nott was a goblin, so she had <em> no </em>excuse.</p><p>So, really, it was her own fault when Molly set the sewing aside, rolled over, and grabbed her by the scruff.</p><p>“Whatcha doing?” he asked brightly, grinning from ear to ear.</p><p>Nott jumped almost out of her skin and gave a high sort of strangled shriek, still clinging to Fjord’s pack. “There’s no liquor in here!” she said, stiff and staged and awkward and just a bit too loud - rookie mistake - “Oh, boy. I’d better go down to the bar-”</p><p>Molly set her down on her feet. “What were you looking for?”</p><p>“Nothing,” Nott said, too quickly, her eyes flickering away. “Liquor?”</p><p>“Were you looking for this?” </p><p>Molly had not, exactly, been <em> planning </em>for something like this. Except that- Well, it was kind of hard to miss just how interested Nott had been, from the moment Jester got Fjord that letter of recommendation in the first place. Caleb had barely seemed to notice it, but Nott...it seemed like every night Molly was up on watch, Nott’s eyes were open, and lingering on Fjord’s pack, where the papers were. It did not take terribly much guessing, was what Molly was getting at, and...well, paper was cheap, if you didn’t need the best possible kind to copy spells down with. And Molly usually went through a few drafts before he was ready to copy something onto one of his cards, just to see if he liked the look of the thing, so he’d had it already. Might as well make use of it.</p><p>From the little strangled gasp, and the way Nott’s whole face lit up behind her bandages, he was going to say he’d guessed right.</p><p>“What will you give me for it?” he asked, his grin widening, pulling the paper back before Nott could make a grab for it.</p><p>“I’ll give you…” Nott started, her voice wavering a little - hadn’t expected to get caught, probably, hadn’t planned for it. “A...a whole gold piece!”</p><p>Molly was already shaking his head. “No, something- I don’t want money, I want something-” he paused, inspiration striking him out of the blue. “Something you can tell me.”</p><p>Nott blinked at him. “<em> Tell </em> you?” <br/>“That’s right.” Molly’s grin grew wider still. This was <em> perfect </em>. “If you’d upset Caleb, or...or done something he didn’t like without meaning to, what would you do to make up for it?”</p><p>Nott’s lamp-like eyes narrowed. “Why- Why do you- <em> What did you do? </em>”</p><p>“We may’ve...had a disagreement, earlier,” Molly hedged, “I might’ve gone...gone a bit far in getting my point across. And I want to make it up to him. How do you think he’d like me to do that?”</p><p>It wasn’t as though he could ask Caleb, after all. Just because Molly hadn’t gone rooting around in all that damage didn’t mean he couldn’t see the shape of it, just vaguely, and if he tried to ask Caleb what he could do to make up for it probably all he’d get was a reminder that, after all, Molly had meant to make Caleb uncomfortable in the first place. He couldn’t take that back just because the end result had shot right past ‘uncomfortable’ and into places Molly had never meant for it to go.</p><p>Nott was still glaring at him, but there was something considering about it now.</p><p>“I guess…” she said slowly. “I mean...normally when Caleb’s upset, I try to get him some book money, or- or paper, if we’re in a town that has it and I think I can lift some without being noticed. Or, you know, if there are books but we can’t afford them even with extra book money…”<br/>“Something to <em> do </em> ,” Molly repeated. “Not <em> buy </em>.” Not like any of them were short on money at the moment, and even if they had been...it would feel like a buy-off. Like bribery. Not the way you dealt with one of your own, and even if this wasn’t an actual marriage the way people kept assuming it was, Caleb still came under that category just for being a part of their ragtag little troupe.</p><p>“Don’t have to <em> pay </em> for it,” Nott muttered mutinously. “I didn’t think you were that cheap, but nobody ever said anything about <em> paying </em>…”</p><p>“It’s not about the money. Just something, that I can do, that will make up for our disagreement.”</p><p>“I don’t know!” Nott snapped. “It’s not...that’s not how it <em> works </em> . We don’t- He never <em> asks </em>people to do things if he doesn’t have to. And, I mean, most things he can do pretty well for himself, not like…”</p><p>Molly sighed, and handed over the paper. So much for <em> that </em>line of inquiry. It wasn’t even that he’d be opposed to presents, in the ordinary run of things, as a just-because thing between friends, but for an apology...no.</p><p>He heard the rustle and then.</p><p>“Ah- <em> Fuck </em>you!” A pause and then. “Maybe it’s invisible ink?”</p><p>Molly grinned to himself in the dark. “Don't try and go through his stuff, you're just going to get caught.”</p><p>“All right,” Nott muttered sulkily.</p><p>“What did we talk about grumpy people?” Molly hadn’t thought she’d <em> listened </em> , admittedly - he’d had his money on Nott deciding to do the opposite just to spite him, with the way she’d been acting since Alfield, which was really rather unfair, since Molly had no interest whatsoever in the role of wicked stepparent - but apparently <em> some </em>of it had stuck, going off the look on Nott’s face.</p><p>“You’re right,” she admitted. “He’s not grumpy.”<br/>“He’s not grumpy,” Molly agreed,</p><p>“He <em> should </em> be,” Nott added, sounding stung now, “If I barfed up salt water every morning <em> I </em>would be grumpy.”</p><p>“Maybe if he spends more time around Beau he’ll be grumpier,” Molly offered.</p><p>“You know what, I think he <em> is </em> grumpy,” Nott had a considering look on her face now. “But he stands next to Beau so much that he <em> looks </em>happy.” She paused, squinting suspiciously up at him, then added. “So...did you mean it, about making up with Caleb?”</p><p>Well, that was a trap of a question if ever Molly had heard one.<br/>“I’d like to,” he admitted. “And, I mean, who’d know better than you? You’re the one he listens to. The one he trusts. If anyone’s going to know how to make him feel better, it’s going to be you.” </p><p>It would’ve been nice if that line worked. It always seemed to work when Gustav did it, but somehow Molly had never quite got the trick. Nott just looked even more suspicious.</p><p>“If you hadn’t- hadn’t <em> made advances </em>,” Nott hissed, doing a remarkably good impression of a farm wife suspicious that Molly intended to seduce away one of her children to the circus - a subset of person Molly had encountered far too many of for having only been alive two years, especially when one considered he had seduced exactly no farmers’ children into joining the carnival along the way - “Then Caleb wouldn’t- Wouldn’t be all twisted up in his own head about this. He’s...he’s got it into his head that you’re...Caleb is very smart. But he’s...not...not experienced, in these sorts of things-”</p><p>“Nott,” Molly interrupted, “Are you...is this the speech I think it is?”</p><p>Nott glowered up at him.</p><p>“...it is,” Molly surmised. “Let me stop you right there. Caleb is an adult. So am I, by...most definitions. I have no designs on his virtue, and I doubt he could find mine with a map and a locator spell. All I want to do is come up with a decent apology. Which, before you ask,” he added quickly “Didn’t have anything to do with me ‘making advances’. Not  the kind you’re thinking of, anyway.”</p><p>Whether Caleb had expected something like that when the person he was currently stuck sharing skull-space with had pinned him up against a wall was another, awful question of its own, but bringing that up was only going to get Molly a crossbow bolt somewhere painful, and if Caleb hadn’t come up with that idea on his own, Molly wasn’t going to plant the suspicion.</p><p>Nott’s eyes narrowed even further. “What did you-?”</p><p>The door opened. Fjord blinked at the two of them, a towel not nearly big enough for its purpose wrapped haphazardly around his hips, reminding anyone in viewing range of what a wretchedly attractive band of technicolour miscreants Molly had joined up with. Molly tried to picture what he was seeing. Molly, sprawled out on the bed and looking down at Nott, who was half-crouched next to Fjord’s pack, clutching a piece of paper. He pushed himself up.</p><p>“Well, it’s been fun,” he said, as casually as he could manage. “I’ll just leave you to it. She’s going through your stuff, by the way,” he added as he brushed by Fjord, and heard Nott’s hissed and strangled-sounding explosion of cursing behind him before turning onto the stairs.</p><p>Yasha, unfortunately, had followed Fjord in the washroom, so Molly ordered a mug of whatever Wessek thought was most drinkable and settled in to wait for her. The circus had never performed much in cities - there were fewer places to set up than in the little towns on the outskirts, and their take was generally poorer even when the patrons were richer, just because there were so many extra tolls to be paid. There were always Crownsguard to be bribed and operating costs to be covered, but when a town was going to charge a percentage just for letting the circus in its walls, they’d been better off just going elsewhere. Not that Molly was ever going to say that, especially not anywhere Beau could hear him, but he’d never been in any city this big before. The Tri-Spires alone dwarfed most of the towns the circus had played in. The Leaky Tap was good, wasn’t much busier than a sleepy small-town tavern, even if it had an actual <em> washroom </em> with water that looked like it got topped up every day, and more ales, spirits and wines on offer than Molly had ever seen all in one place, even if he recognised a few of the names. He looked forward to trying every single one of the ones he <em> didn’t </em>know before they left town. </p><p>He wished Yasha were there. Or Gustav, or Desmond. The Nein were great, he liked them, he was looking forward to travelling with these people for the foreseeable future, if their own issues didn’t tear them apart first, but he couldn’t imagine asking any of them but Yasha, seriously, what he was supposed to do next. Still, he had other options for that. A straight three-card draw wouldn’t take too long. Concentrating enough on something else that he couldn’t feel the marks on the cards was trickier, but Molly was an old hand at that, too.</p><p>The first card was no surprise. It was the same card that came up every time he’d tried this, ever since old Thistlebucket, the carnival’s first fortune-teller, had invited Molly into his tent for a reading, less than a month out of the ground and still re-learning how to speak. He hadn’t needed Thistlebucket’s faltering explanations - the old gnome had never had much of a tongue for the bullshit you needed in this job, it had been what got him arrested in the end - to know the lightning-struck, burning image of the Tower for what it was. The first time, it had sent a shock of horror through him, that first realisation that there had been a past that had brought him to the circus, that he hadn’t been born under the earth, with the taste of fire in his mouth and a hole in his chest. These days, Molly barely glanced at it. The second card was much more his style - the Fool. The first card he’d ever drawn for this deck, and one of the only attempts he’d ever made at a self-portrait, back when his hair was still short enough that the curls were just starting to spring up. Also not much of a surprise - new starts, new beginnings, the first step on a new journey.</p><p>“Yeah, I had noticed that part,” he muttered. “You couldn’t be a bit more specific?” The cards, being nothing more than a pair of pasteboard rectangles that Molly had painted with his own hands, did not reply. “Thought not.”</p><p>Card number three was the first of the minor arcana that had shown up this time - normally, Molly had to massage a reading to get this sort of clustering of obviously-significant cards in one place. Apparently he was just special that way, which was very flattering but <em> really </em> inconvenient right now. Ten of wands reversed. Molly picked the card up and looked at it. It was one of the sketchier cards - he did most of his work at night, by darkvision, and that wasn’t great for colouring - but clear enough. None of the associations were <em> good </em>. Deceit, subterfuge, being tricked into taking on responsibilities not his own, or abandoning them entirely...apparently even his cards had decided to turn on him today.</p><p>“I was looking for advice, not a moral lecture,” he muttered sourly, and tucked the cards away. He wished Yasha would hurry up and come down. She never talked much about what she did on these unexpected jaunts, except sometimes to show him a new flower she’d found while she was away, or, occasionally, a few words about something she’d seen - a storm, or a river, or a bright-eyed stoat too quick to be caught for food - but he wanted to hear that, now, whatever she wanted to share. He’d wasted most of their only real time together today with his own problems. With- Caleb, which was...maybe not a fair way to think about it, but he couldn’t think of any other.</p><p>Like tonguing at the gap left by a loose tooth, he found himself reaching for the bond again. Caleb was upstairs, in the room he and Nott had claimed, and when he concentrated Molly could feel him, sitting on his bed with his spellbook in his lap and his cat draped across his shoulders. He jerked his mind away from that image so fast it made his head spin, though the echo of Caleb’s fierce concentration lingered at the edge of his mind like the feeling of having stuck his hand in a cold spring.</p><p>If it wasn’t his problem, it wasn’t his business, Caleb had said, and that had been fair. Molly wouldn’t want Caleb poking in on him like that, and he’d poked enough tonight already.</p><p>He flashed one of the less toothy of his repertoire of grins at Wessek from across the bar. “Another glass?” he asked. “Something different, this time? Surprise me.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>So, it turns out I can, in fact, get quite a lot of mileage out of one day of downtime.<br/>On an unrelated note, NEXT CHAPTER, I am going to get to Cree turning up. I hope.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Caleb had meant what he said in the sewers - he had no intention of keeping anything he had taken for long. That was not to say he did not mean to use it. The armour he had found in the sewers could not have been more clearly suited to Fjord short of having his name stamped on the breastplate, and would have gone to him, Caleb suspected, even if he had shared his find with the others. It had been made for Fjord, or he for it, and offering it in trade had won Caleb some much-needed goodwill in addition to the glove of blasting he had asked for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not enough, of course. Fjord had asked for trust, and Caleb- Caleb couldn’t give it, and had bought himself only a few more days before he had to decide between the risk of refusal and the risk of lying outright, either one of which would destroy what cautious camaraderie the armour might have earned him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Mollymauk had caught him in the act.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t think he would use this to drive Caleb out of the group - even if Mollymauk had wanted to, there wasn’t much point, when their marriage still meant that they could not be free of each other, however much Mollymauk might want to be rid of any tie to the likes of Caleb. And if he had tried it...well, that had been half of why Caleb had reached out to Fjord and Jester in the first place, to buy the goodwill he could not honestly earn. And maybe- maybe Mollymauk had only meant what he had said. Not everyone lived in the world Caleb had been groomed for, where not using one’s advantage only meant that you were saving it for the moment when it would do most damage. In the moment, Caleb had been too caught up in his own emotions, the sudden, irrational flood of terror and the need to conceal it, to be paying much attention to whether Molly had been telling the truth or not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he had harboured any hope, however, that that one confrontation in the sewers would be the end of it, it did not last long.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha had left them in the night, it turned out at breakfast the next morning, having stayed only a day this time, and Caleb could feel Mollymauk downcast at the news, even as he smiled and told the rest of them that it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Yasha just...did this, from time to time. Not greatly so, not enough that any of the others could see it, though apparently with Molly sparkling waters ran deeper than Caleb had first thought, but enough that Caleb could feel it, through the bond, like a cloud coming over the bright sunshine of Mollymauk’s usual cheerfulness, dimming everything, just a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s good,” Mollymauk was saying now, taking a sip of the watered ale they’d all been served with breakfast. “She’s just got some personal issues that she’s going through.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you-” Caleb started, and cut himself off before he could bury himself any deeper. It was no concern of his if Mollymauk missed his friend, or...maybe more than friend, what did Caleb know? There were certain...assumptions...that he had made about both Molly and Yasha’s preferences, but he had no way of knowing if they were accurate, or whether, in fact, he had inadvertently come between a long-established pair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk raised his eyebrows at him. “Don’t I what?” he asked, sounding faintly amused now. “Go on, speak up. We’re all friends here, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb stared down at his plate, wishing he had never spoken at all. “I just thought...was it not difficult, with the circus?” he asked, “How...presumably she had some way to catch up to you, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shrugged. “We followed a pretty regular circuit, all the time I was there. We’d pass the winter down south to get away from the worst of the snows, then head back north again in the spring. We were just starting south again when the circus broke up. Guessing travel’s going to be a bit less regular with you all, but Yasha’s got a way of finding people. We’ll see her again. And it’s not like we’ve got any plans on leaving Zadash any time soon, is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have to wait at least until my money comes in,” Jester put in. “So, you know, we’ll be here a while. How long is she usually away for? Like, this time she was only here again for a day, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, that’s...that’s rare.” Molly’s tail flicked idly over his left shoulder. “But she’s more than worth waiting for. She’ll be back in her own time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From there, the conversation turned back to this group that Fjord and Beauregard had apparently almost stumbled into, on the night of their arrival, the Knights of Requital. They sounded, to Caleb, like a fairly typical group of malcontents muttering in a cellar, and whether they would have the nerve to try and enact whatever sweeping changes it was they discussed at their meetings was a question all on its own. Caleb had been intending to stay as far out of it as he possibly could, but- first Jester and then Mollymauk had made a fair point, and one scruffy human vagrant with hair so filthy that its distinctive red could hardly be made out most of the time was a far less conspicuous conspirator than any of the other options gathered around their table. Also, if he didn’t agree to it, Beauregard might </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually </span>
  </em>
  <span>punch him in the face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were just about to separate to their various errands - Caleb and Jester both had business in the Tri-Spires, Beau was looking for a tailor, and Fjord and Nott had both expressed an interest in returning to the Invulnerable Vagrant to see Pumat Sol again - when Mollymauk pounced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Before we split up, are there any...I don’t know...any errands you need run outside the Tri-Spires?” he asked casually, pulling on his embroidered coat, which he’d left draped over the back of his seat while they ate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For one wild moment, Caleb thought this was the lead-in to some plan, that maybe Mollymauk had assumed that he had kept that armour to sell, and would now need to find a suitable buyer for it - because, of course, Caleb himself could have no use for it - somewhere outside the Tri-Spires, that Mollymauk was making some dig, trying to reveal his deceptions to the group-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But- The bond was not foolproof, he knew, but he couldn’t feel any malice that way, or anything, really, but that sun-through-shutters cheerfulness, that made Caleb want to stretch out and roll around in it like Frumpkin in a sunbeam, and something purposeful that Caleb couldn’t identify. A trap?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was still looking at him, waiting for an answer. Caleb fumbled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- Ah- Nein. That is...if I had, then I would be doing that instead of- of gadding about in the Tri-Spires?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Molly felt- disappointed? Caleb tensed. Had this been the opening move in a plan after all? He hadn’t thought Mollymauk was the type - a liar, a charlatan and a cheat, maybe, but so was Caleb, and Mollymauk, it had become clear very early on, had moral scruples that Caleb could no longer pretend to. Then again, it would be those same moral scruples, if anything, that might make him want Caleb </span>
  <em>
    <span>gone </span>
  </em>
  <span>enough to ignore the fact that separating might rob him of any chance of securing his freedom from Caleb in the future.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t picture you ‘gadding’ anywhere,” Mollymauk said, and there was something almost tentative about his next words. “I might have to tag along just to witness it. If you’ll have me, I mean,” he added hastily, because even if Caleb had been making an effort to keep any of his many, wide-ranging feelings on that subject off his face, the bond would’ve thwarted his efforts, and Caleb had not been making any such efforts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-” Caleb swallowed. For a moment, his shoulder burned with the heat of Molly’s remembered nearness. “I would not- Of course, your business is your own, and if it takes you to the Tri-Spires that is...that is not my concern…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does that mean you’re coming along to the Tri-Spires, Molly?” Jester asked, bouncing a little in place. “I could show you the Pillow Trove! And, you know, if anywhere in the city is going to have a candy store, it’s going to be there, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk coughed. “Oh- I...wouldn’t want to intrude where I’m not wanted,” he said, for once sounding awkward. Caleb blinked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We </span>
  <em>
    <span>literally </span>
  </em>
  <span>met you intruding where you weren’t wanted,” Beauregard scoffed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk rolled his eyes. “Because it was my </span>
  <em>
    <span>job</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Besides,” he added, with another bright, shallow grin. “I think it worked out pretty well. Nobody </span>
  <em>
    <span>forced </span>
  </em>
  <span>you to come to the carnival, did they? And if you hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here together now, would we?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“None of which </span>
  <em>
    <span>changes </span>
  </em>
  <span>the fact that you </span>
  <em>
    <span>literally </span>
  </em>
  <span>used to barge in where you weren’t wanted</span>
  <em>
    <span> for a living</span>
  </em>
  <span>!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly opened his mouth, clearly gearing up to say something sharp in response, and this time, Caleb could feel the anger and the creeping, sticky sensation of- was that- could that be </span>
  <em>
    <span>shame</span>
  </em>
  <span>? Caleb couldn’t credit it, but there it was, faint but still there, even if Caleb couldn’t imagine what it might attach to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- It is all right,” he said quickly. “I- If you want to come with us, Mollymauk, you would- you would be welcome.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly cast a sidelong look in Caleb’s direction, and Caleb felt- It was hard to describe. Most sensation through the bond was, though he could draw comparisons, here and there. How to describe the feeling of someone else’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>mind </span>
  </em>
  <span>against your own? There was no language of the senses with which to describe it. The nearest Caleb could come was to call this a curious </span>
  <em>
    <span>poke</span>
  </em>
  <span>, questioning and sharply directed, impossible to ignore. He startled, staring around wildly, and Mollymauk- Mollymauk seemed no less confused than Caleb felt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great,” Mollymauk said, in a bright, brittle sort of voice, still staring at Caleb in about as much confusion as Caleb felt, staring back at him. “That’s...that’s settled, then. Great.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau made an irritated noise. “Looks like I’ll be tagging along with the group going to Pumat’s, then,” she said. “They’re going more my way anyway, and if we want to know what people in this town actually think of the government ‘round here, we shouldn’t just ask people in, you know, the fancy part of town.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” Jester’s face fell a little. “Do you...would you like us to bring you anything back? You know, if we find a sweetshop, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh…” Beauregard looked, for a moment, taken aback, then shrugged. “Sure, if you find anything that isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>too </span>
  </em>
  <span>sweet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One bag of candied wasps soaked in vinegar it is, then?” Mollymauk put in, sounding a lot more like his usual self.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck you,” Beau groaned, at which point Fjord, who appeared to have taken it upon himself to play peacemaker between the rest of the Nein, suggested they split up now, and meet back up at the inn that afternoon, ahead of the evening meeting, so they could set up a watch for the crownsguard before it started. If these Knights of Requital had any idea what they were doing, they’d have one of their own already posted, but if they were fool enough to meet in the same place twice running, Caleb wasn’t holding out much hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, fifteen minutes later, he found himself walking through the gates of the Tri-Spires quite unmolested, he and Mollymauk flanking Jester like the world’s most mismatched set of bodyguards. They draw stares, even so - tieflings did not appear to be a common sight in the Tri-Spires, and Mollymauk in particular would draw attention in any crowd - but Caleb, in his dull but respectable new cloak, and cleaner now, even after their jaunt into the sewers, than he had been for months before this, went all but unnoticed. Probably he was being taken for their manservant, but that suited Caleb. No-one in this district would look twice at him then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We made it!” Jester giggled, giddy as a schoolgirl getting away with some audacious bit of mischief, though she has to be twenty at the least by Caleb’s reckoning. “Isn’t it beautiful?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s nice in here,” Caleb allowed, hunching a little deeper into his cloak and feeling, all at once, just how out of place he was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be nicer if they took the gates down,” Mollymauk said, speeding his steps to rejoin them. “Let everyone have a piece of it. I keep expecting to be kicked out for clashing with this whole...aesthetic...they’ve got going here. So, where was it you wanted to go again?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester bounced a little on the balls of her feet. “I have to go to the Pillow Trove,” she said quickly, “And- Caleb, what was that- that </span>
  <em>
    <span>smutty </span>
  </em>
  <span>shop you wanted to go to called? We could ask one of the guards where to find it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk laughed, and Caleb felt the echo of it, a little thrill of warmth that he flinched away from even as everything in him reached out for it. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Not for you, Bren Ermendrud. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“I’ve underestimated you, Caleb!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-” Caleb felt the heat rush to his face. “I...well, I- am not made of stone,” he hedged awkwardly. “And, you know, you never know what you will find in these...these little </span>
  <em>
    <span>specialist </span>
  </em>
  <span>bookshops, especially if they also sell second-hand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was one of the lesser-known secrets of wizardry, and one of the harder-learned, that a good second-hand bookshop could hold as many magical secrets as any ancient library of the arcane. Caleb had learnt that secret before he ever came to Trent Ikithon’s attention, when it had just been him and Astrid and Eadwulf, three lucky kids from Blumenthal who had beaten the odds and made it to the Soltryce Academy, and hadn’t wanted to let one of the opportunities that gave them slip by. Caleb had been the first of them to learn that the second-hand bookshop two streets away from the Academy, the cheapest place for three farmers’ children from a little town in the Zemni Fields to buy their set texts, regularly found itself in possession of magical texts far in advance of what they were supposed to be reading. Chastity’s Nook might or might not be one of the kind, but there had been another bookshop in Rexxentrum, which they had all been strictly informed they were not to enter and thus immediately resolved to explore at the first opportunity, that housed not just what had to be one of the most thorough collections of pornographic literature in the empire, but also a hidden stock of magical texts on almost every topic - some of them nested within the pornography, even, such as the coded treatise on fire magic that some long-ago wizard had encrypted as a diary of his own exploits - presumably fictional, if only because Caleb couldn’t think of any other way he could have got it to match up so neatly unless he was deliberately scheduling trysts for the purpose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk glanced around at the general opulence around them, and for a moment Caleb felt something uneasy creep through the bond, a single bitter note in Mollymauk’s good mood. “This doesn’t really seem like a second-hand kind of place.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He coughed. “Yes, well...I had it from a- a fairly reputable source that this place was, you know, the best place to go, so…I’m going. It is called Chastity’s Nook.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Predictably, both Jester and Molly broke into snickers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, it’s right in the name,” Caleb said, as flatly as could be managed when being used as support by two cackling tieflings - or rather, one cackling tiefling who was herself being leant on by another - Mollymauk hadn’t come within arm’s length of him since last night in the sewers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s grin was nearly wide enough to split his face in two. “Truth in advertising! Now there’s something you don’t see every day!” As former advertising, Caleb supposed Mollymauk would know. “Do they have unicorns as well?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll go and ask!” Jester said, stifled laughter audible in every word, and darted off, back towards the gate and the guards. Caleb watched as she caught one, and the look the man gave her before pointing off deeper into the Tri-Spires made Caleb very relieved he hadn’t gone to ask himself. He’d have been turned out within minutes, bath or no bath. Then, Jester was bounding back over. “It’s just over there! It’s in the Silken Terrace, and- and there’s a bakery right next door, so we won’t even have to find a candy store!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speak for yourself,” Mollymauk retorted. “I still need to see this. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of bakeries, but nowhere that </span>
  <em>
    <span>just </span>
  </em>
  <span>existed to sell candy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed. “There...stores in cities tend to be more- more specialised. There are more customers and- and, well, more money floating around.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d been a little overwhelmed himself, the first time he’d seen Rexxentrum. Funny to think of Mollymauk feeling the same way, when he must have seen any number of towns and cities with the circus, and Caleb could not imagine whatever life he had had before that being very much more confined.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A </span>
  <em>
    <span>lot </span>
  </em>
  <span>more, looking at this place.” That bitter note in the bond had returned again, stronger. “And hardly anyone stops to look at it properly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “I...suppose they must be used to it,” he said hollowly. You could get used to practically anything, after all, if you lived with it long enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that’s just </span>
  <em>
    <span>sad</span>
  </em>
  <span>. No wonder they all look so grumpy.” Mollymauk was glancing around again, and there was something speculative on his face, a faint stirring of interest at the other end of the bond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester, however, looked about as far from ‘grumpy’ as it was possible to get. “A smut shop </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>a bakery!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now I have to ask,” Mollymauk put in, “Do they do pornographic cakes at this bakery? It seems like the sort of thing they should be doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go find out!” Jester spun around. “Or- Wouldn’t it be great if it was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>combined </span>
  </em>
  <span>smut shop and bakery? With pornographic cakes, obviously,” she added, nodding at Mollymauk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Something for everyone,” Mollymauk agreed, and the three of them set off in search of cake, pornography, and possibly pornographic cake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It started raining before they were halfway there, but Caleb’s new cloak was decently waterproof, which was more than anyone could say for his coat, or for Molly’s, for that matter. Jester’s half-cloak didn’t look all that substantial either, now he was on the topic. It wasn’t a problem that seemed to bother anyone else in the Tri-Spire, the richly-dressed people hurrying past around them all bundled up warm in coats and cloaks and mittens.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t hard to spot Chastity’s Nook, once they’d reached it. Even putting aside the arched sign over the door, nowhere else in the Tri-Spires looked quite that...bucolic. It looked like a romantic artist’s rendition of a country cottage, though better-kept and better-repaired than most of those Caleb had known, with bright new thatch and real glass in the windows, not the waxed paper they’d used in Blumenthal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, that’s...picturesque,” Mollymauk said, looking up at it. “D’you think they get many customers who look at the place and think it must sell toys or scented candles or something, then get the shock of their lives when they go inside?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shot him a sideways look. “You have difficulty with the concept of a candy store, but not somewhere that exists solely to sell scented candles?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shrugged. “If one exists, why not the other? All the temples have to get theirs from </span>
  <em>
    <span>somewhere</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked. “Good...uh...good point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hope they do!” Jester was grinning from ear to ear like the cat that had caught the pigeon. “Oh- I could change the sign, so it says something like- like the Cozy Nook, and see how many people just run out screaming the second they’ve gone in!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly hummed. “That sounds like the sort of thing that’ll get us kicked out by the crownsguard. So we definitely shouldn’t do it until </span>
  <em>
    <span>after </span>
  </em>
  <span>we’ve got Caleb’s smut sorted out. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Then </span>
  </em>
  <span>I’m all for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe- maybe after the bakery?” Caleb tried. “Are you hungry?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From Jester’s reaction, he might as well have asked ‘do you breathe air’. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>am hungry!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cakes, it turned out, were not pornographic, but there were bear claws, cheese and meat pasties, and glazed fruit tarts that Mollymauk had bought a pair of, and asked for extra rose petals on the one he’d wanted a box for, and the markup on fresh bread was far less than Caleb had expected in this part of town, even if it was going to take a while to be ready, which gave them time to step into Chastity’s Nook while they were waiting for that to be ready.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew, almost the second he stepped inside, that this was not the same kind of shop as that second-hand bookstore in Rexxentrum.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The dim lighting was more-or-less the same, but if Jester had been hoping that unsuspecting patrons would wander in off the street and only realise what sort of bookshop it was they’d found when they tried to pick up a book, she was going to be sorely disappointed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air was thick with the smell of incense - rather too much incense for Frumpkin’s nose, because while kitty sneezes were cute, claws in the shoulder from one’s understandably-annoyed familiar at being forced to deal with things that made him sneeze were less so - as well as scented candles, burning oil and, underneath it all, the faintest smell of sex, where apparently some customer or other had got a little overexcited. And, hanging from the walls or laid on the ground, there were hangings, carpets, tapestries, paintings...more or less every form of visual decoration Caleb could think of, and every one the purest smut.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was looking around now in some interest, and on Caleb’s other side, Jester was very nearly vibrating with glee - somehow they’d rearranged themselves on the way from the bakery so that Caleb was sandwiched between the two tieflings - and Caleb suspected that the owners of Chastity’s Nook were soon going to find some additions to their obscene artwork, although, with this many dicks on display already, it was an open question whether anyone would notice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um, hello?” Caleb looked around. The voice had come from a middle-aged human woman in a heavy cable-knit sweater - presumably the shop’s proprietor - who was peering at the three of them through great outsize round glasses that magnified her eyes to the size of an owl’s. “Can I help you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb swallowed, momentarily taken aback. “That...is a very handsome sweater you have,” he blurted out, because it was, and because...honestly, he still didn’t know he wanted to admit what he was really there for in front of Mollymauk. Jester was probably safe enough, but Mollymauk...Mollymauk knew too much about Caleb already. “Is that from here in the city?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman practically glowed, and Caleb writhed with shame. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Manipulative</span>
  </em>
  <span>, his mother’s voice tutted disapprovingly in the back of his head. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s not kind to play with people, Bren.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you so much! Oh- I- it was a gift. I- Welcome to Chastity’s Nook!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk grinned. “You’d be Chastity, I’m assuming?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- Oh, no. No, my name is Iva-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is a pleasure to meet you,” Caleb filled in quickly, before Mollymauk could make another comment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-Iva Deshin, and this is my shop.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb nodded. “Iva Deshin,” he repeated. “All right. Ah- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you know, I am new to town, and I’m looking for a bit of reading, and, um, this place has been highly recommended to me, and I’m wondering, ah, what- what-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A wicked grin spread across Iva’s face. “Recommended? You want to go to the back.” Her eyes flicked downwards for a moment, and Caleb half-wondered what she was looking for, and whether she often attracted customers in such a state that that would be appropriate behaviour, before the grin...shifted slightly, something softening at the edges. “We don’t get a lot of couples in here,” she said brightly. “Let me guess. You’ve gotten into a bit of a rut, and now you’re looking for something to give you a bit of inspiration to spice things up again?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Was</span>
  </em>
  <span>-? I- No, that is...no, we are not-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Iva said firmly, clicking her tongue. “All power to you and your spouse for realising what the problem is and trying to work it out! How long has it been, if I may ask?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- We- It has only been a month since we...since we were married,” Caleb said awkwardly, his ears burning, as he felt something warm and rich and bubbling with amusement through the bond from Mollymauk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Iva’s eyes widened. “A- Oh! Oh, I see I’ve misunderstood. Honeymoon reading, is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked around to catch Mollymauk’s eye, but there was no help there to be found - Mollymauk looked as though it was taking a great deal of effort not to double over laughing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...ah...something like that…” Caleb conceded, his ears burning in miserable defeat. “I- You know, my tastes are- they are very varied. Um...and I am always looking for something new.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If she grinned any wider, he thought, he was going to have to seriously consider the chances of her being secretly some creature from the Feywild, because the human face was not supposed to work that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ooh. I have recommendations, if you like? And you, si- ma- hon- ahem. Well, yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk, who had wandered off to thumb through a stack of loose engravings on the long table, looked rather like Frumpkin faced with the prospect of a bath. “Oh- I’m not much of a reader. I think I’ll just stay here with these, if it’s all the same to you. Pick out something </span>
  <em>
    <span>filthy</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he added, smirking at Caleb. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would, Caleb reflected, heat rushing unbidden and unwanted to his face, be much easier if Mollymauk would make up his mind as to whether or not he thought this was an actual marriage or not. He’d said he didn’t, in the bathhouse, and Caleb- Well, Caleb was in no position to say otherwise, and would not have chosen this any more than Molly, but- It was probably the way he’d grown up. Impossibly far-removed as any of that felt from who and where he was now, there were apparently some things he couldn’t shake, and some lingering belief that this </span>
  <em>
    <span>mattered</span>
  </em>
  <span>, somehow, appeared to be one of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Iva’s grin tipped towards the sly. “Well, that sounds like a pretty solid base for recommendations.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Truthfully, Caleb barely heard most of the list. None of it sounded like a likely cover for magical texts, and, scanning the room, there was no hint of a sign that might suggest a section of used or traded books.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-There's </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tusk Love</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That one's a little more saucy…” Iva was saying now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Tusk Love</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” Jester hissed beside Caleb, her mouth dropping open and her tail flicking excitedly in a way that made Caleb think, again, of Frumpkin, all sharp teeth and wicked glee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll pass over</span>
  <em>
    <span> Guard of My Heart</span>
  </em>
  <span>, since it’s filth you’re looking for and that one’s a little more gentle, more of a classic love story. We’ve got Shallow Breaths, that’s a bit more bawdy, and-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can I get a copy of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tusk Love</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Jester asked, leaning in eagerly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Iva raised a curled hand. “Right this way!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb fell into step just behind Jester as Iva hurried away, glancing around at the books. None of them </span>
  <em>
    <span>looked </span>
  </em>
  <span>markedly older or more worn than any others.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-You know, I’m obviously here for a purpose, but I like historical fiction as well?” he said hopefully. “And I like when the two things are-” he knotted his fingers together, “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Combined</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Do you know what I mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She did, in fact, know what he meant. Unfortunately, she didn’t know it nearly well enough, and while </span>
  <em>
    <span>Courting of the Crick</span>
  </em>
  <span> certainly sounded like an educational...and, indeed, edubational...read, there wasn’t more than a flicker of magic to be found in the whole shop, and that one flicker from a customer, not a book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Disappointed?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was Mollymauk’s voice, and Caleb could have screamed at him. Of course he was damn well disappointed - Mollymauk could undoubtedly feel that well enough. And now, too, Caleb would have to buy something or he’d have wasted Iva’s time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nein,” he lied. “I...am content to wait. This book...may be what I am looking for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shifted, and for a moment, Caleb felt an uncertainty that wasn’t quite his own. He glanced around, just for something to do with himself, and saw Jester had flitted halfway across the shop to talk to one of the other patrons.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can always find somewhere else, if it isn’t,” Mollymauk said out of nowhere. “Or somewhere cheaper. Half of what makes a fancy place like this work is charging three times as much for the same old bullshit people are selling in the Pentamarket. Why don’t we go and look, after we’ve got our pastries? We can probably find something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a kind offer. Too kind, really. Certainly too kind, given all Molly already knew of him, even if the worst was still Caleb’s secret to keep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I don’t understand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shrugged. “I haven’t been in this city very long, but I’d be surprised if this was the only place in the whole city that does decent smutty books. Though I’m definitely going to be buying up their etchings,” he added, producing a small wad of pasteboard cards, bigger than his tarot cards and brightly painted with erotic images - Caleb could make out a white-haired and compactly muscled man, naked except for a coat and a strategically-placed firearm, one of the new ones coming out of Tal’Dorei, before he looked away again with his cheeks burning - “I can help you look for one, if this book isn’t it for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I understood what you meant, but why…why are you doing this? You do not-” he tried to marshal his words. “You have no reason to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk, to his credit, didn’t try to pretend he didn’t know what Caleb was talking about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s an apology. Or an attempt at one. Or- the start of an attempt at one, anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb stared at him. “And what- I am sorry, but I...what are you apologising for?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Disbelief shot through the bond, so sharp and overpowering that Caleb nearly flinched as if Molly had thrown something at him. Pity was soon in following, and Caleb tasted ash. He did not deserve Mollymauk’s pity, and he didn’t want it either. Furthermore, he didn’t know what Mollymauk was pitying him </span>
  <em>
    <span>for</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Nothing so very terrible had happened to Caleb since they had met - quite the reverse, in fact. Caleb had not eaten so well in years as he had since he and Nott had become a part of the Mighty Nein.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shifted a little. “Last night, in the sewers-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah.” Caleb swallowed. “You may ask Fjord or Jester about the- about what I found there,” he said quickly. “I...suppose I should have expected you would want your share of the findings, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Mollymauk blinked at him. “Caleb...I think we have very different understandings of the word ‘apology’. I am trying to make one. Just so we’re clear here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. “I...accept?” he said cautiously. “Though- it is fine, really. And, you know, the money and...and items I found have been distributed, so we can- can put the whole thing behind us now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...and that’s it?” Mollymauk was blinking at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It is...I have done worse things to better people.” That, he thought, probably covered whatever it was Mollymauk was apologising for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk did not seem to agree with him, and Caleb...couldn’t interpret half of the jumble of confused emotions he could feel brushing against the edge of his mind. Thankfully, before either of them had to try and put any of that into words, Iva was hurrying back with the book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is the piece!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was nothing magical about </span>
  <em>
    <span>Courting of the Crick</span>
  </em>
  <span> either, though it was beautifully bound and the writing style was just the sort of thing Caleb might have sought out if leisure reading was still something he allowed himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are there illustrations?” Jester’s voice hissed in his ear, and Caleb jumped nearly out of his skin. He hadn’t noticed her reappearing, he’d been distracted, so wrapped up in a book meant only for pleasure that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings, Trent would have </span>
  <em>
    <span>flayed him </span>
  </em>
  <span>for a mistake like that-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not that I’ve seen,” Mollymauk answered, from Caleb’s other side. “Not even those illuminated letters you get sometimes on signs and such. We used to have those on the flyers,” he added, “But our fortune-teller back then was the one who drew them - Thistlebucket, he was the one who taught me - and he got arrested last Winter’s Crest for...something complicated, involved the attempted destruction or desecration or something of some little town’s sacred tree. I don’t think Thistlebucket knew it was sacred or anything, he was just walking back from the tavern one night and it was conveniently there, but the lawmaster wouldn’t hear it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester snickered, and even Caleb couldn’t suppress a snort. He paged ahead a little, just on the off-chance - either there might be an interesting spell mentioned somewhere or there would be halfway-decent smut, and at this point he’d take either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Iva, however, swooped down before Caleb had got more than three pages ahead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I understand if that was enough of a peek and you’re interested,” she said brightly, reaching over to close the book gently on his fingers, “You could purchase?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed. “Yes, well...it’s a high-quality item, uh...you can understand my...er...excitement,” he prevaricated. It was, too. Under other circumstances, he’d have been delighted to find a quiet corner and devour the whole thing in one sitting, but he didn’t have so very much of what they had made in Alfield left, after paying for pastries next door, and to waste it on something like this, just because he happened to like it...no. He would need more paper, soon enough, and incense in case another guard decided that kicking poor, defenceless fey cats was something it was even remotely appropriate for the alleged protectors of the Dwendalian public to be doing with their on-duty time. “I’ve been thinking in, in the space of time that you have left, and while I would like to purchase something here today...uh...I am very low on funds, and just the nature of this book and the trouble I could get into- I mean,” he added quickly, as anxiety flashed across Iva’s face, “Your secret is safe with me, but it is too hot for my hands.” Quite what it was he’d have to buy was another question again - he couldn’t very well ask for whatever was cheapest. He thought back over the list of titles, and decided he might as well pick one at random.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“These, however,” Mollymauk cut in, before Caleb could say anything, “Probably aren’t, if you’re keeping them in front of house.” He brought out the packet of pasteboard images. For a moment, Iva looked almost disappointed. Then she looked at the pictures themselves, and a wide grin slid back across her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I see. Er...the Heroes of Tal’Dorei set - that’s vintage, you know, and rather hard to get on this side of the Shearing Channel. It was banned for obscenity and...er...extreme poor taste in Whitestone twenty years ago, which is how I came by that set, as a matter of fact.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb glanced down. He couldn’t see what was in particularly bad taste about the cards - they looked relatively tame, next to the various nudes scattered around the room, with the one currently on top showing a dark-haired half-elven man with a dagger in either hand, an elaborate harness of black leather straps, wide feathery wings and a swirl of yet more black feathers covering his modesty - but maybe Whitestone was particular about these things.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk waggled his eyebrows. “Better and better. That’s just another measure of quality in your trade, isn’t it? If something hasn’t been banned </span>
  <em>
    <span>somewhere </span>
  </em>
  <span>it’s probably too dull to bother with. So, how much are you asking for it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Iva paused to consider it. “Well...that is my only copy, and the whole set together is </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite </span>
  </em>
  <span>rare. Not quite as dear as...as the other piece, of course - you have to price for the risk, you know how it is-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do,” Mollymauk agreed. “I do know how it is. And since we’re not </span>
  <em>
    <span>in </span>
  </em>
  <span>Whitestone, and these don’t come under any obscenity laws here in Zadash…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, but rarity, I have to price for that too - and the age, of course. They’re a little over twenty years old, and have never been reprinted…”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m </span>
  </em>
  <span>getting the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Tusky Love</span>
  </em>
  <span> one,” Jester cut in, and leaned up to hiss something in Iva’s ear that had Iva giving her a sly and sidelong look. “Caleb, do you want anything?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” Caleb groped for something to say. “Well, if Mollymauk’s cards are that expensive, maybe...maybe we shouldn’t get a book as well,” he settled on after a second, carefully avoiding Mollymauk’s eyes. It wasn’t as if Mollymauk hadn’t used this story before, he thought irritably. While they were supposed to be getting divorced, even.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then again, when they were supposed to be getting divorced, it had been sort of unavoidable. Mollymauk had made no bones about not considering any of this to matter, and Caleb- Caleb would probably be better off if he could do the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They left the shop, in the end, with a wrapped parcel of books for Jester and a new set of cards tucked into an inside pocket of Mollymauk’s coat - Caleb hadn’t noticed the pockets before, all of them sewn into the lining, so as not to spoil the lines of the coat or present an easy target for pickpockets - and pockets twenty gold lighter than they had been, not one copper of it Caleb’s. He picked up the tab at the bakery, just to balance things out, but apparently either Molly’s new cards were more valuable than they had looked or the bakery’s prices less inflated than Caleb had first thought them, because it didn’t even things out at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was that need for reciprocity which had him show the others his bread mittens trick, as soon as they were back out in the early-autumn chill. The drizzle had eased off while they were inside, but some of the damp still lingered in the air, and it would only get worse from here. It had taken him a while to figure it out - fresh bread, in those first few months, had been so rare and so dear that he’d wolfed it down hot like a wild creature, and not stopped to think until winter about how good it had felt to hold something warm again, just for a little while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t expected either of the two tieflings now flanking him on either side to react the way Nott had - her whole small face had just lit up when he showed her the trick, thrusting her clawed hands into the broken-off ends of the bread and beaming in genuine pleasure at how warm it was - but there was something almost comforting about Jester’s blank incomprehension. Far more comforting than the twist of something like pain that was not his own, and the way Mollymauk kept trying to catch his eye.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is there...anything else either of you want to do while we’re here?” he asked, looking at Jester, as the lesser of two dangers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester wrinkled her nose. “I think there’s a casino here?” she suggested. Apparently Caleb was not quite as good at guarding his expression as he had thought he was, or Jester was more perceptive than he’d given her credit for, as she was quick to add: “But, we can just go to the Pillow Trove.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And after that, find another bookshop?” Mollymauk’s tail flicked. “I think we’ll need to go somewhere else to find anywhere that does second-hand, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shook his head. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Nein-</span>
  </em>
  <span> That is, no, thank you. I- I am fine. And there- there is no guarantee another bookshop would have what I was looking for either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, what </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>you looking for?” Jester asked, nudging him in the ribs. “There was plenty of other smut in there. Some of it was probably historical smut.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...uh…” Caleb coughed. “I wasn’t actually looking for...not that I have any objections to- But, you know, sometimes, if people bring things in to trade they are not- not always forthright about what those things are, or- or do not know themselves, and it is…is useful, sometimes, to find books at an easier price than they would ask if they knew what it was they were selling.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk nodded. “All right, that- that sounds fair. Do you want to go and find somebody a bit more gullible to buy books from, or are you good?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- I am good.” Caleb rubbed at his arms, wishing Mollymauk would stop looking at him like that. “So - we are going to the Pillow Trove?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes!” Jester bounced up on the balls of her feet. “And - You know, maybe Mama won’t have sent anything yet, but I can show you my room, and maybe we can come back sometime, all of us, and get a room there when the money arrives?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” Caleb cast a look at Mollymauk. “I...am not sure they would take all of us, but...I suppose we can try. If you think that is something you want to do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is!” Jester paused. “You...might need to take another bath first,” she said, almost apologetically. “It is only...you don’t smell </span>
  <em>
    <span>as </span>
  </em>
  <span>bad, but you still smell a bit, and since that is after you were in a sewer…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>in a sewer,” Caleb reminded her, a little irritably. “And it is not as though all of you smell that wonderful either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The rest of us at least tried to wash up after,” Jester muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk raised his hands. “Let people have their eccentricities. They might not let me in either, you know. For some reason, people keep assuming I’m planning to steal everything that isn’t nailed down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wonder where they got that idea from,” Caleb said dryly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have never taken anyone’s gold they weren’t lining up to give me!” Mollymauk retorted. “And if people want to pay for something, why deny them? You’ve done the same thing, with that money pot scheme of yours.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but I am not- I have no illusions about what I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what am I, that you think I have illusions about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly, Caleb was still trying to figure that one out himself. Mollymauk...resisted all description or categorisation. It was what made him so difficult. The rest of the group, Caleb thought he could work around, but he could not get a read on Mollymauk. So, of course, it would have to be Mollymauk who had taken the other ring. It was about typical of Caleb’s luck - although, he had to admit, he could not think who in the rest of the group he would rather have found himself married to. Not that he would’ve been, he reminded himself, since Mollymauk was the only one of them who’d have decided to kiss Caleb in the first place and got them into this mess to begin with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are...very colourful,” he said after a few seconds’ thought. “And probably lying about the priests.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>lying about the entire story he launched into to explain the lie about the priests, but it wasn’t a bad story, and Caleb wasn’t here to pry. If Mollymauk wanted to keep his secrets, he could, so long as Caleb was allowed to keep his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Pillow Trove, when they got there, was...if anything, even more opulent than Caleb had imagined. It wasn’t- He was not unfamiliar with the trappings of wealth, though it had been a very long time since he had seen them this close-up. Trent Ikithon had been a wealthy man, but he had been wealthy in a different way, manifested in the quality of the wine he had served at dinner - spoilt sometimes with the aftertaste of ozone, or the bitter edge of almonds - and the ready availability of paper and ink and rare components for his spellcasting. That had been overwhelming enough for Caleb at sixteen, but in other respects, there was not so very much difference between Trent Ikithon’s country estate and the Soltryce Academy that had come before it, and after a year’s study Caleb had been almost used to that. And none of it had been anything like the Pillow Trove. He half-expected to be turned out immediately with a flea in his ear - he’d been cleaner than this when the crownsguard had refused to let him into the Tri-Spires just yesterday - but somehow Jester seemed to carry all before her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe the clerk had just been distracted by Mollymauk’s brief, ill-fated attempt to charm Madam Luenna. That seemed about equally plausible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Miraculously, however, none of them had been thrown out, and nobody had so much as directed Caleb to a servants’ entrance as the three of them headed up to Jester’s rented room.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a much nicer room than anywhere Caleb had ever slept in his life before. Even as a student at Soltryce, the Academy’s dormitories had been designed with economy in mind, and at Trent’s estate thereafter...a Volstrucker needed to be able to endure any discomfort in pursuit of their duties. He realised he was petting the lacy bedcovers of the great ostentatious bed, and pulled his hand away quickly, leaving a regrettable smudge of grime and crumbs on the sheets.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You wanna try it out?” Jester’s voice said in his ear. Caleb jumped. How did she keep </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing </span>
  </em>
  <span>that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- No.” He coughed. “No, I- You see what I have done to it already, I do not want to- to incur more costs for you-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well,” Mollymauk said with determination. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m</span>
  </em>
  <span> going to try it. How sturdy would you say this bed is?” he added, looking at Jester.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester shrugged. “I mean...it’s pretty nice. I haven’t tried bouncing up and down on it yet, but- We should bounce up and down on it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk laughed. “Woman after my own heart! We’ll do that after.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“After?” Caleb asked, jerking back wide-eyed from the bed. Surely Mollymauk could not intend- Not with Jester right </span>
  <em>
    <span>there</span>
  </em>
  <span>, surely- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk stepped back three careful paces, and then took a flying leap at the bed, landing with a creak of boards and sending little decorative pillows flying in every direction. Jester shrieked with laughter, and Caleb could feel Molly’s glee radiating through the bond like the taste of lemonade at a summer fair, fizzing and effervescent and- and not meant for him. Caleb looked away as Mollymauk rolled over onto his back, grinning so wide it showed off every one of his sharp white teeth. The last image he needed to take away from this room with him was Mollymauk, sprawled out across this decadent bed and flashing those needle-pointed teeth at all and sundry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aren’t you going to join us, Caleb?” Caleb looked back around. No- No, actually, that was even worse. Molly </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>Jester sprawled out on a bed together and asking him to join them- Just no. It was too much. He could </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>the blush creeping up his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...do not think that would be the best idea,” he muttered. “I am- You saw the marks I left just touching the sheets, I wouldn’t want-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester made an irritated noise. “I rented it! And- You know, they will have to change all the sheets and stuff anyway because I rented it, and wash them and everything, so we might as well make it actually dirty so they’re not wasting their time cleaning it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something in that logic seemed rather backwards to Caleb, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hunched deeper into his coat and cloak, though the room was quite warm, hoping that neither of the tieflings could see just how red his face had grown. “I am fine here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Caaaa</span>
  </em>
  <span>-leb…” Jester pouted at him. “We’re going to bounce on it next…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, at least, provided a better excuse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...don’t think that bed will take all three of our weight doing that.” Caleb cleared his throat. “I…I will be fine here, really. If you would let me borrow your book for a bit, then-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester’s eyes went wide and she bounced up and off the bed. “Oh! If you’re going to do that, then you should know I got you a present!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you did what?” Mollymauk sat bolt upright on the bed, fixing Jester with a look of pure incredulity that Caleb could feel the shadow of, even if he couldn’t make heads or tails of </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>Molly was affected by it. Jester was already rummaging in her bag, and produced, after a second, Iva Deshin’s beautifully-bound copy of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Courting of the Crick</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you- You bought that book?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Jester beamed. “I bought you history porn!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You bought me that book?” Caleb repeated. “This is so expensive for that book - this is just smut!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, technically you gave me the money for it?” Jester looked momentarily abashed. But only momentarily. “Is it useful?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- don’t know,” Caleb admitted, shifting. “I don’t read things like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt, for a moment, a quick pulse of something like relief and something else like disappointment through the bond.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester brightened. “So you’ll come on the bed with us?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I am going to start reading things like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t a half-bad read, either. A little dry, but so were most of Caleb’s old favourites from his Academy days, if you weren’t willing to put the effort in, and it at least gave him something to do with his hands and an excuse for not getting involved with the conversation. Even if he wasn’t quite sure his pose of complete absorption had convinced either Mollymauk or Jester, but they were at least pretending not to notice him stealing glances over the top of his book, and that was the best he could ask for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester had thrown the curtains open, and was all but dancing around the room, gathering up her things that she’d left here last night and chattering with Mollymauk. He ought to have given her his ring, Caleb thought. Those two </span>
  <em>
    <span>fit</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Molly was grinning right back at her, his hands sketching shapes in the air, one of his new cards suddenly between his fingers. Let them be bright and beautiful and overwhelming together, and shine bright enough to blind the likes of Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He twisted the wedding band on his finger, his fingers skittering over the words engraved on the band in a language no-one else in their party spoke, and tried not to think about what those words had been meant to mean.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hey, everyone! Back at uni now, so updates might be a bit more sporadic, and since I've been moving back in this isn't quite up to my usual standard. Thanks to QueenWithABeeThrone for betaing the first part, and for helping me work through a lot of the characterisation.<br/>I'm afraid this is a bit of a filler chapter, since no big changes happen, but don't worry, the first of the really big changes should show up next chapter.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caleb <em> knew </em> the Knights of Requital. Not the individuals, of course, or even the name - this was a young group, so far as he could tell, and provincial, their goals extending no farther than the removal of one possibly-corrupt local official. Probably that was the only reason they had lasted this long. They met too openly, too conspicuously - nothing, Caleb could tell them, was quite so conspicuous as a group of conspirators meeting in the darkened cellar of a tavern, so obviously trying to avoid attention that they ended up attracting it instead - and too often, not even troubling to hide their names or their faces. These were the sort of rebels Trent Ikithon had given to his students for <em> practice </em>, and Caleb-</p><p>He didn’t hate them, he didn’t resent them, he didn’t intend them any harm, but harm would come to them no matter what Caleb intended, and the most sensible thing the Nein could do in the face of that was run. Listen politely, make no promises, maybe if they felt like being altruistic offer Dolan and Horris a few words of warning on their way out the door, and get out of Zadash before the Crownsguard had enough evidence to move against the Knights of Requital.</p><p>But, of course, that wasn’t what they did.</p><p>Fjord’s plan was a step up from what the Knights had come up with on their own, but still not a sure thing. Even with the fortune they were being offered in pay, Caleb didn’t even know if the High-Richter whose life they were being hired to destroy was guilty of anything beyond being just the sort of everyday asshole in power that you’d meet in every corner of the empire, with the usual array of petty prejudices and venalities. Dolan might be better than that, or he might not - Caleb certainly had not been acquainted with him long enough to say for certain, and even if he had, his own judgement in these matters was...not always to be relied upon. This had not been, in any way, shape or form, the sort of work he had ever intended to do again.</p><p>But he had agreed to do it anyway, and used his own experience to add to the plan, because the pay was good, because he had been outvoted, and because...well, where else was he going to go? He couldn’t leave the Nein, not without Nott, and not with Molly still able to find Caleb wherever he went with nothing more than a stray thought. It was, he supposed, one way to enforce the ‘till death do you part’ bit of the vows they had not made to one another.</p><p>Which was how they had ended up here, in the sewers beneath Zadash, with the High-Richter and one of the Knights dead behind them, the Tri-Spires falling above them, and still no real idea of what was happening or why. For a moment, Caleb had almost thought he saw Trent in the chaos but that- that was pure paranoia, it had to be. Even if it wasn’t, Zadash was a big place, and there were- there were greater things at stake, surely, even without his amulet to protect him. Caleb clung to that thought, and the reminder that, after all, it had been a momentary glimpse of grey hair and ornate robes in a world gone mad.</p><p>He clung to that thought right up until they came upon the Crick- The <em> Xhorhasian </em>- in the sewers, and suddenly all at once things became at once much clearer and a thousand times more complicated than Caleb had ever thought they would be.</p><p>Whatever that dodecahedron was, it was more powerful than...anything Caleb had ever handled or even <em> seen </em> in his life, the sort of thing Trent Ikithon would have sold his eye-teeth and the souls of every student he’d ever had just to touch for a moment. Something vast and alien and...terrifying in that vastness, but fascinating at the same time, and for the same reasons. He wanted to touch it again. He wanted to back away slowly and never go near that thing again so long as he loved. He found himself rubbing at his arms again, as he answered Beauregard and Mollymauk’s questions, and felt the pulse of worry from the other side of the bond - Mollymauk, at least, seemed to have realised just how dangerous this thing was, even if he wasn’t admitting it. <em> Why </em>wasn’t he admitting it, though? Caleb eyed him warily, not sure what he was expecting, but all he saw was Mollymauk, wan and wide-eyed and still a little breathless from the fight, the kohl around his eyes smeared halfway down his face over the course of the day.</p><p>“Let’s wake up the elf,” Caleb said shakily, dragging his eyes away from Mollymauk’s face to look down at their bound attacker.</p><p>It didn’t yield much. Granted, pissing on a Crownsguard helmet might not have been the most eloquent way to convey their lack of allegiance to the Empire - Caleb had felt Mollymauk’s startlement through the bond, in what was a truly appalling show of hypocrisy given Molly had had no qualms whatsoever about flashing his own dick around, covered in painted lesions, before the hospital raid that had started this whole fiasco - but it at least sort-of seemed to work. It was Mollymauk that really carried the argument, and honestly that still worried Caleb, a little, how easily he was able to pull information out of people, just with the tone of his voice and that sharp-toothed smile. Mollymauk would have made a <em> remarkable </em>interrogator, under the right tutelage, the part of his brain that still watched the world with a Volstrucker’s eyes told him, and Caleb- Caleb had spent too long under that tutelage to discount the insights it had left him.</p><p>What information they got from the Xhorhasian was worrying enough. Caleb...well, he hadn’t been entirely lying when he had said he had no love for the Empire. He had none for the Cerberus Assembly, and everything he had learnt at Soltryce and thereafter suggested the two were very nearly one and the same. That didn’t mean he had any reason to love Xhorhas, or to wish more attacks against the people of the Empire where he had been born. And if they had allies this far into the Empire, more attacks seemed all but inevitable. His parents would have turned the Xhorhasian in without a second thought.</p><p>Caleb couldn’t.</p><p>That didn’t mean he was necessarily opposed to the idea of killing the Xhorhasian and taking this ‘beacon’, but that would at least be quick, which was more than could be said for what would happen if the Volstrucker got their hands on him. At the very least, they could not take the Beacon and leave the Xhorhasian here, alive.</p><p>It probably also wasn’t a great idea to poke the thing with a sword, but that was what Mollymauk did. Caleb wasn’t especially sure that giving this man and his beacon to the Cobalt Soul was a brilliant idea either, but it seemed like all they had, on all sides, were bad ideas.</p><p>Mollymauk was still kneeling by the bound Xhorhasian, his hands on the ropes, not quite ready to untie them yet.</p><p>“What’s your name, again, friend?” he asked, his voice low and confiding, inviting trust.</p><p>There was a long, still pause, and then the drow gave a long, heavy heartfelt sigh.</p><p>“Thuron.”</p><p>It sounded like ‘Thuron’ anyway. On one level, it sounded like ‘Thuron’, just as, on one level, everything he had said since Caleb had cast the spell had sounded like Undercommon, even if he could understand every word. On another level, the same one that meant that every word he had spoken had sounded like plain Zemnian, the language of Caleb’s childhood, he heard something else. ‘Second-born’, he thought, and ‘blessed’. ‘Blessed second-born’, maybe, though with a weight to it that suggested that more was meant than having been his parents’ second child.</p><p>“Thuron,” Mollymauk repeated, leaning in a little. “Help us out here? I’m Molly, and I-” he looked around, broke off, started again. “Give my friends more to go with. Give them something, some reason to trust you, to make sure that this is not going to come back and bite us in the arse. I mean,” he added, “That’s what we’re looking for, here, is just a reason for us to be able to walk away.”</p><p>“Then walk away.”</p><p>Mollymauk hissed something too low for Caleb to catch.</p><p>“I’m good either way,” Fjord replied, and Caleb- Maybe it was just this night, the panic and the uncertainty and the frustration of how little they really knew, but he couldn’t tell which of the hard knot of anxieties twisting in the pit of his stomach were his and which were Mollymauk’s.</p><p>“How did you lose the thing in the first place that you need to get it back?” Mollymauk asked, after a moment.</p><p>“It was taken from Xhorhas.”</p><p>Mollymauk frowned, leaning his chin on one hand. “By who?”</p><p>A low, dark chuckle and the sort of bitter grin that Caleb had seen far too many times, in interrogation rooms and darkened halls where quiet executions were carried out: </p><p>“From your <em> fucking </em>wizards.”</p><p>Caleb’s heart stuttered in his chest. The Assembly. It had to be the Assembly - who <em> else </em>but the Assembly? He’d been right. If that hadn’t been Trent he’d seen, it had been one of his associates, and if that were the case, the best thing Caleb could do was leave the dodecahedron, kill Thuron and find the deepest, darkest hole he could to hide in for as long as he could-</p><p>He could feel Mollymauk’s eyes on him again for a moment, before his attention snapped back to Thuron and he gave a soft snort.</p><p>“I don’t have any wizards. Well, I have one wizard, but-”</p><p>“He doesn’t like the other wizards,” Jester put in.</p><p>Mollymauk looked around, “Well, to be fair, they are kind of arseholes.” His eyes flicked again to Caleb, and Caleb’s breath caught. No. No, that wasn’t how this worked, there was no way Mollymauk could know-</p><p>Except that Caleb had just given himself away.</p><p>Thank all the gods for Jester, who interjected just as Caleb was really starting to wildly consider fleeing back towards Nott and trying to disappear somewhere in the Tri-Spires.</p><p>“It was stolen from him! We should just let him have it.”</p><p>Caleb coughed. “I...uh...agree with Jester,” he lied.</p><p>“I don’t know…” Beauregard muttered, glancing around at the rest of them, toying idly with the straps around the head of her staff.</p><p>Mollymauk was frowning still, but at Thuron, not Caleb, even if Caleb wasn’t fool enough to think he hadn’t noticed Caleb’s panic. “How did they take it?”</p><p>“I don’t know the details.”</p><p>“Did they come to you?”</p><p>“I was just sent to retrieve it. I don’t know all the answers.”</p><p>That fit, Caleb thought distantly. That fit far too well. This- This would be one of his opposite numbers, he supposed, if he hadn’t broken, if he’d stayed with Trent. Because, of course, Xhorhas must have something similar. The confirmation that they’d been sent by the Empress herself just made it clearer that this- this was a much deeper game than Caleb wanted any part of.</p><p>The rest of their party seemed to agree with him on that much. Not that it did Thuron any good. They were close enough to hear it, when the crownsguard caught up with him. In hindsight, they really should have seen it coming - one injured man, hunted by what must be all the power the Cerberus Assembly could bring to bear, and they had taken away his sword and left him and his astonishingly conspicuous black armour to make their way alone. Of course he had been caught, and with his death the dodecahedron, whatever it was, was back in the hands of the Cerberus Assembly.</p><p>It was Nott’s idea to steal it back, and spite that made Caleb agree to the plan. They didn’t know what the dodecahedron was, or what it did, but whatever it was, the Cerberus Assembly wanted it, and that was reason enough to ensure they never saw it again even before Caleb stopped to think about how <em> staggeringly </em> dangerous this ‘beacon’ really was.  He didn’t want Trent Ikithon anywhere near this thing. He didn’t want anyone even vaguely <em> connected </em>with Trent Ikithon anywhere near this thing. Which meant, of course, that they had to take it.</p><p>It wasn’t even difficult - the crownsguard clearly didn’t have the first idea what it was they had found in the sewers. All it took was a distraction and a well-placed disguise and suddenly, the Nein had something in their hands that had been worth a Xhorhasian attack in the heart of the Empire.</p><p>Naturally, the first thing they did was shove it in a cellar.</p><p>Caleb’s spells could make the cellar decently secure - at least, enough that if anything managed to reach the dodecahedron, they’d know it was powerful and deliberately looking for something hidden in a skeleton-infested cellar. And short of the skeleton becoming animate and trying to kill them both, Caleb and Nott would be safe down here too.</p><p>Mollymauk had not been a fan of that part of the plan, and Caleb still couldn’t make sense of that little pulse of concern at the thought of Caleb being scried on too. It made sense, he supposed, just on a practical level, or- Mollymauk was the sort of person who felt guilty over...Caleb still wasn’t sure what it was Mollymauk thought he had done to Caleb that needed to be apologised for. That night in the sewers had been Caleb’s fault, not Mollymauk’s, and even if he wasn’t sorry for the decisions he’d made that night, that was no reason why Mollymauk should be.</p><p>But if Mollymauk felt guilty about that, enough so that he’d wanted to do something tangible to make amends, wanted to hunt through second-hand bookshops with Caleb despite having not displayed even a hint of an interest in books before, it wasn’t inconceivable that he’d worry this way over a teammate, and not even one he had any particular reason to like.</p><p>He’d helped them hide the dodecahedron after that, and offered to join Caleb and Nott down in the cellar not long after that, citing both of their relative squishiness as a reason they might need a decent melee fighter for company. Caleb hadn’t known whether this was yet more of that unearned, unnecessary concern or just an excuse to get Caleb alone and ask why he had reacted so strongly to Thuron talking about <em> their fucking wizards </em>, but whichever it was the answer would still be ‘no’.</p><p>Nott was harder to convince, which was- Caleb couldn’t deny the warmth of it, to have someone fussing over him again. It reminded him of Blumenthal, visits home during that first year at Soltryce before he came under Trent’s tutelage, his mother fussing at him that he was too thin, had he eaten or slept at all since he’d been away, so buried in his books he’d forgotten he was more than eyes and a brain. He ought not to give into it - Nott had troubles enough of her own without worrying over him, and he- he had to be at least twice her age, he ought to be the one looking out for her. Besides, today had not been so very bad, for him at least. The burns from being so close when Ulog had detonated his...whatever that jewel had been...were no worse than he had inflicted on himself by accident, and it had all happened so quickly he had been unconscious before he had realised enough to panic.</p><p>“You’re just going to stay here in this dank, dark room with a skeleton,” Nott asked, peering up at him with great, protuberant golden eyes. “By yourself, no dinner…” she trailed off, looking at him, “All right.”</p><p>Mollymauk cleared his throat. “I mean, I could bring something down, or…”</p><p>“<em> Nein </em>,” Caleb said quickly. “I- I told you yesterday, there is...I have already accepted your apology, you don’t need to- to make a grand performance of it any longer. You are forgiven.”</p><p>Nott’s eyes narrowed as she looked between them. “<em> I’ll </em> bring you something,” she said firmly. “You haven’t eaten today - he never does, unless he’s reminded,” she added, fixing Mollymauk with a baleful stare. “And sometimes if he thinks you’re not looking he’ll put half of his in your bowl, even if it was divided fairly, so watch out for that.”</p><p>“That…” Caleb coughed. “That is hardly something Mollymauk needs to know, is it?”</p><p>He hadn’t thought that Nott had noticed him slipping her extra food. She had needed it - she felt the cold more than Caleb did, and though he had no idea how old she actually was, if Nott was older than seventeen, in human terms, he would be surprised. And here she was, worrying over Caleb, because even she could see that, left to his own devices, Caleb would probably still be where she had found him in that cell, half-starved and without a hope or a plan behind him.</p><p>It wasn’t the same, he told himself. He protected Nott, and Nott protected him. They were a partnership, that was how those were supposed to work. But what did that mean, in the end, when half of what Nott did for him, he ought never to have burdened her with to begin with?</p><p>“Caleb?” Nott prodded, and he realised with a start that he’d missed the tail end of her and Mollymauk’s conversation. “I’ll- I’ll be back in less than an hour. So...you know, sit tight.”</p><p>Caleb forced a smile. “I can handle longer. You haven’t eaten either, not since breakfast, you should get yourself something.”</p><p>“We can eat together.” Nott crossed her arms, and cast another sideways look at Mollymauk, who gestured at the ladder back up towards the alley with a ridiculous showman’s flourish.</p><p>As soon as the hatch shut behind them, Caleb was hurrying back towards the dodecahedron, lifting it up to hold it in his lap, the glowing grey surface oddly warm to the touch, pulsing in his hands like a beating heart.</p><p>He half-wanted to reach for it again, but the other half of him was already quailing at the memory of that vast emptiness, and how it had felt to fall into it, so deep that he thought there hadn’t been an end to reach. He swallowed, and tried to think of nothing.</p><p>He’d been thinking of nothing for almost fifteen minutes when he heard Nott’s voice in his ear, checking in, and then there was really nothing for it but to sit tight and talk to Yorick. He was a surprisingly good conversationalist, for being dead. Of course, Caleb had never been much of a mimic, had never managed to lose his accent in Common as thoroughly as Wulf or Astrid could, when called upon, but he thought he’d done a passable enough job, this time.</p><p>Of course, most of what Yorick had to say concerned Caleb’s secrets, the keeping thereof, and just how slim his chances of being able to continue to keep those secrets were, now that one of his travelling-companions had such an insight into his innermost fears. It was not an especially cheerful topic of conversation.</p><p>He felt, for a moment, an odd tug through the bond that for a moment he couldn’t identify before it settled. Apparently Mollymauk was in pain. But there was no- no sense of urgency, no fear. There was nothing to indicate anything wrong. Caleb tensed. It could be nothing. For all he knew, Mollymauk could’ve just stubbed his toe. Or the crownsguard could have caught up with them. Or the Volstrucker - if the Assembly wanted this thing, no response was out of the question-</p><p>But no, he felt the spike of faintly-spiteful amusement that followed, and that- that wouldn’t have happened if there had been any serious trouble. He wished he knew what was going on. Or that he didn’t have a clue what was going on and could just settle down to wait and talk to Yorick and maybe think about what spells to prepare for tomorrow, without being disrupted by random spikes of Mollymauk’s emotions for which he had no real context. Frustration, mostly. And annoyance, which Caleb didn’t think it was paranoid to suspect was directed at Caleb himself. Apparently Mollymauk had heard that Caleb had not, in fact, taken his reproofs from the sewers to heart.</p><p>He heard Nott’s voice in his ear.</p><p>“Caleb, are we going to abscond with the dodecahedron in the dead of night? You can reply to this message, and only I can hear your reply.”</p><p>Caleb nearly groaned. He supposed he should have seen this coming. Either Mollymauk had finally spoken up, or Fjord had decided to bring up the incident with the scroll-case.</p><p>“Tell them I’m not going to run off with it.”</p><p>Although why they would take his word for it, if they really believed that was what he was planning, was beyond him.</p><p>He had, he knew, fucked things up with Fjord. He’d missed his guess there, assuming that after the gift of the armour, Fjord had some reason to look the other way if Caleb saw something he wanted or needed on their travels, that might not need be brought to the attention of the rest of their little group. He’d gambled on that, and ended up with a sword to his throat, and dark, eldritch and...surprisingly fishy-smelling energy creeping towards Nott. Fjord had said he’d leave both of them to die over one scroll-case, in a house they’d already pretty thoroughly laid waste to, which was now half-destroyed by Ulog’s final attack. Caleb believed him. And now Fjord was going to tell the rest of them, and render their place in the group even more uncertain.</p><p>For a moment, he felt a twinge of something that was not quite shame through the bond, and then...Caleb frowned, and pulled away. No. He was not going to try and untangle...whatever that was that had Mollymauk so worried. Mollymauk’s thoughts were his own concern, as much as Caleb’s were, and Caleb- He could understand a quid-pro-quo. He would stay out of Mollymauk’s mind, and Mollymauk would stay out of his. That was how he would present it, when Mollymauk came asking.</p><p>But Mollymauk didn’t come. Nott did, scuttling in and shutting the hatch behind her with a harried, hunched-over look.</p><p>“How’s it going up there?” Caleb asked, straightening up a little and rubbing again at his bandaged arms.</p><p>“I stole this fucking scroll for you!”</p><p>Caleb blinked. He stared down at the scroll case in Nott’s hand - the same scroll case from the High-Richter’s house that Fjord had stopped him from taking.</p><p>“I got it,” Nott hissed, “I went back and got it.”</p><p>Caleb stared at the scroll some more.</p><p>“Does anybody know you took this?”</p><p>If Mollymauk didn’t know already, he would guess something had happened - even if Caleb tried to hide it, the bond would let him know the moment Caleb opened the scroll and found out what new magic Nott had found for him. Caleb wanted to open it, wanted more than anything to see what the scroll held, but dread clenched in his stomach like a fist at the thought of what the consequences might be.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Nott was still looking up at him, grinning a wide, sharp-toothed grin, and Caleb- Caleb couldn’t disappoint her.</p><p>With steady hands, he set the scroll-case down and pulled Nott into a fierce hug, burying his face in her hood.</p><p>“Thank you,” he whispered against the rough fabric.</p><p>Nott shifted against him, her arms coming up around his neck. “Thank you for saving me tonight. You brought me back from the dead.”</p><p>He hadn’t, not really - that took a cleric, which was one thing Caleb had never been, but it was nice to be appreciated, all the same, even if he had to talk Nott down from giving him one of her potions to make it up.</p><p>“No- Look, see? It is fine, Nott. I can- I am a lot harder to hurt than you are, now.” He held up the hand with the ring. “And if- if anything gets past that, you can- you can deal with it when it happens, <em> ja </em>?”</p><p>Nott bit her lip, which was a more serious concern than it might be for a human, with teeth like hers. “You’re sure about this, Caleb?”</p><p>“Ja, of course. You’re- You’re too kind to me.”</p><p>“Of course,” Nott pulled away a little. “You keep me safe. Caleb- Is it true that Molly would be able to find us wherever we went because of those rings?”</p><p>What had they <em> said </em>up there?</p><p>Caleb nodded. “Yes. Yes, that is true.”</p><p>“And there’s...there’s no way to stop it, or- or turn it off, or…”</p><p>“If there is, I haven’t found it yet.”</p><p>Nott paused. “...what sort of person wanted to always know where their spouse was all the time?”</p><p>“I don’t know.” Caleb forced a smile. “I- suspect that they thought it would be much more romantic than it has turned out, though.”</p><p>“Or they were afraid of being cheated on,” Nott pointed out. “Lots of people get...get a bit nervous about that sort of thing. Especially if they’re- if they’re away a lot, or maybe- maybe one of them is- is obviously too good for the other...”</p><p>Her eyes darted away for a moment, and she toyed again with that finger - it was the same one Caleb wore the ring on, the second-least finger on her left hand, and Caleb wondered if she had left someone behind, in the goblin clan she never spoke of, willingly or not.</p><p>He didn’t quite dare ask.</p><p>“Well, that- That hardly applies, in this case,” he said instead. “Nott- I think maybe you have guessed it before now, but I care a great deal for you, and that is no small gift. Thank you.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Nott echoed. “But- Caleb. This does...does mean that we’re...we’re sort of stuck with them, right? I mean...unless you want to kill Molly after all, because I am <em> entirely </em>up for that, but-”</p><p>“No.” Caleb swallowed. “No, but...it might be a good idea to be- to be very careful about that scroll case. I don’t- I would rather Mollymauk did not find out about this, and tell the others. Fjord especially has the potential to be...to be dangerous to us. We learnt that tonight.”</p><p>“He <em> would </em>tell the others,” Nott muttered. “He told Fjord about me trying to take his letter for that Academy place-”</p><p>“The- the Soltryce Academy?” Caleb asked, his heart leaping into his throat. It was- It was a stupid response, even if Nott had taken the letter, there was no way he was going back to Rexxentrum, they would have to drag him back, but-</p><p>But it was hard to remember that, when just the words brought it all flooding back.</p><p>“Yeah.” Nott squinted up at him. “You- You do want to go right? I mean...I’ve heard about it, it’s perfect for you! You could learn even more magic there, and- and get stronger, and maybe one day-” she broke off. “And, you know, I bet they have a lot of magical books…” she went on, a bit less certainly.</p><p>Caleb reached out, and put his hand over both of hers.</p><p>“Nott...I have- I am not going to go to the Soltryce Academy.”</p><p>Nott’s mouth opened, and then closed, revealing an awful lot of very sharp yellowish teeth.</p><p>“But- But you love magic. You’d definitely get in,” she added. “I mean, I bet a lot of people who start there aren’t half as good as magic as you are-”</p><p>“I know. But I-” Caleb shook his head. “You...you couldn’t know,” he lied. “But I was going to go to that school one day.”</p><p>Nott stared. “The Soltryce Academy thing?”</p><p>“Yeah.” He couldn’t muster much more than a whisper, arms wrapped tightly around himself, already trying to find the words that would make Nott stop looking. “Didn’t work out.”</p><p>“What? You didn’t get in?”</p><p>Caleb drew in a breath, and lied some more. “Oh- I didn’t get anywhere near it.” He wished, now, so much, that he hadn’t. “I- ah- I’m from a small town and, er, there was a lot of hubbub for me, and maybe, you know, a gathering-up of coin…” Everyone had been so <em> proud </em>of the three of them. It seemed like half of Blumenthal had had a whip-round to see him and Astrid and Eadwulf off. He dragged his gaze away from Nott, hunching a little deeper into his coat. “But I fucked it up.”</p><p>“Did you- Did you do something wrong? Or- bad?”</p><p>Caleb swallowed, remembering the flickering light of the fire, the screams, and worse than the screams, the silence after. It was that silence he remembered most. The world seemed to have stopped breathing, and he-</p><p>Whatever had been left that was still worthwhile in Bren Ermendrud, it had died in that silence. And here was Caleb, the rind that was left when everything anyone had ever valued in him had burned away.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>Nott’s voice was very gentle when she spoke again. “You don’t have to tell me what it was, or- or what you did, but...is it something that you can be forgiven for?”</p><p><em> No. </em>Una and Leofric Ermendrud had been forgiving people, by and large, so long as Bren had sincerely meant his repentance, but...there were some things beyond even asking for forgiveness, and anyone Caleb could have asked was long dead by now anyway.</p><p>“That is not for me to say.” He swallowed. “But I have no interest in going and they- I do not think it would end well, if we went there. I- I am sorry you didn’t mention this sooner. I could have told you, and maybe- maybe then we might be- be more secure here. I...imagine this had something to do with Fjord’s temper tonight?”</p><p>Nott scowled. “They were very upset that we tried to take the scroll box,” she muttered.</p><p>Caleb forced a rather wan smile. “All of them, or just Fjord? I- I would rather know now who...who we still have to win over.”</p><p>Nott paused. “...pretty much all of them,” she admitted. “Except Jester. Jester’s nice. You know, you could have given that ring to her,” she added. “I bet she’d be nicer to you.”</p><p>Caleb coughed. “Mollymauk...has been making efforts, I think. And...you know, we have not gone out of our way to be nice to him either.”</p><p>“He didn’t <em> sound </em> like he was making an effort,” Nott muttered mutinously. “We didn’t even do anything wrong! I mean, after everything else we did tonight - the rug, all the other things we stole, Mollymauk getting seen <em> twice </em> , outside <em> both </em>houses…”</p><p>“He was seen?” Mollymauk was far from inconspicuous at the best of times, and while before that had been...a passing curiosity, at best, now- Now, capturing Mollymauk meant that Caleb was caught with him, or would be soon enough - everyone broke, sooner or later, and Caleb did not have any faith at all in the idea that Mollymauk would hold out long enough for his information to be dismissed as worthless, simply telling his interrogators what they wanted to hear.</p><p>“Twice!” Nott repeated, still more emphatically. “And, after all that-”</p><p>“It is not as though we could have gone entirely unnoticed even before Ulog quite literally blew the whole plan wide open,” Caleb agreed. “I saw Ulog rifled through her desk and took some papers from there, but I did not see Fjord tear him a new asshole. So - are we on our own, then?”</p><p>Or as much on their own as they could be, when Caleb could still close his eyes and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Mollymauk had gone back down to the bar and ordered a drink since Nott had come down to the cellar, right down to which dark corner of the bar he had chosen to drink in, with his cards laid out on the table in front of him and a wistful sort of frustration seeping through into Caleb’s mind.</p><p>“I don’t...don’t think so.” Nott shifted. “I mean...we can’t run. Not- Beau said she’d hunt us down, and I think she’d even work with Molly to do it, if we took all this stuff with us - they let me bring some stuff down for you to identify,” she added quickly. “Molly had to point out that you couldn’t leave before they went for it, but they did.” She paused, then admitted, very softly. “I- It is nice, with all of them. I mean, not that we <em> can’t </em>leave, but...I’ve had more people throw rocks at me than conversations, and it’s nice. They don’t seem to mind that, you know, my teeth are a little-” she gestured at them with one clawed hand. “People find that off-putting, sometimes.”</p><p>“I do not,” Caleb promised, catching her hand to tug it away from her mouth. “And I’ll tell you another secret. I like them too. Perhaps- Perhaps not as well as I should do, in some cases, but…” he shrugged. “I get that they’re angry. I don’t agree with them. But I get it.”</p><p>Nott gave an apologetic little tip of the head. “Well, they’re not as smart as you.”</p><p>“Or you, I would argue.”</p><p>A bright, startling smile spread across Nott’s face, not a grin or a snarl but a real, true smile that lit up her whole face.</p><p>“That’s nice.”</p><p>Caleb cleared his throat. “So- Shall I take a look at these things they want me to identify?”</p><p>It wasn’t a bad score, all things considered, and they could probably find uses for almost everything they had taken off the Xhorhasian- Thuron. His name had been Thuron. Caleb would have to try and remember that. He had identified the scrolls from the case midway through the pile of little acquisitions, hoping to disguise his own reaction, whatever it might be. It hadn’t worked particularly well - the spells Nott had found for him were too good, he’d been so excited that he had <em> felt </em>Mollymauk’s reaction through the bond, even as he scooped Nott up for another fierce hug. He would pay for that, in the morning, he knew, but for now he was too pleased to resent it. He was still nearly giddy with the thrill of discovery when he and Nott finally lay down to sleep, his fingers itching to transcribe even as he knew that doing it this tired would only increase the chances that he would make some mistake and not catch it in time, leaving him with a flawed transcription and an unstable and dangerous spell. </p><p>Something of the alien sweetness of that excitement followed him into sleep, and when he dreamt, it was of an endless night sky, and a forest of branching paths, and a hundred, a thousand, a thousand thousand other Calebs on every single path. They did not all look like him - there was one in the maroon robes of the Righteous Brand, his hair all aflame; another was dull-eyed and ragged where he lay half-curled on the path, still dressed in the undyed linen shift that was all the asylum had given him; a third had hair cropped severely to his ears and a soft, close-fitting dark tunic, a knife in one hand and a globe of blue-white fire in the other. A fourth again wore simple homespun, and his arms were unmarked by scars. All of them were Caleb, though, and he was none of them.</p><p>Perhaps it ought to have frightened him, but when he woke to find Nott curled against him, he felt better-rested than he had in- in far too long, the details of the dream already melting out of his mind - there had been a sphere, and a flicker of flame, and something vast and ancient and- and unknowable. But not malignant. Quite the reverse.</p><p>The day ahead held new challenges - Caleb wasn’t going to rest easily until they found a lead box for the dodecahedron. He might be safe from magical scrying - or as safe as a person travelling in such distinctive company could be - and all tracking spells but one, but this thing...it was beyond anything he had ever seen before, and that would make any sane person uneasy.</p><p>Thankfully, Pumat Sol did not ask any questions that would oblige them to lie to him about why they needed a lead box and a lot of health potions in such a hurry. Then again, given who his patrons were, perhaps it paid not to look too closely. And, what with one thing and another, and another yet again, Caleb managed to avoid Mollymauk for most of the day. Not entirely - they were too small a group for that, and travelling in too close quarters - but it was enough to never be alone with him. It was a gamble - if pushed far enough, Caleb didn’t know that Mollymauk wouldn’t confront him in front of the rest of the Nein - but Caleb- Caleb needed a better story before he was ready to answer questions about why he had frozen. He still hadn’t come up with anything plausible to tell Fjord about his fear of fire, either, and both of those two were insightful enough that the wrong lie might just make things worse.</p><p>But before any of that, they had to go and pay a visit to the Gentleman.</p><p>The Evening Nip seemed to have gone all but untouched by the chaos in the Tri-Spires, tucked away as it was in a seedy quarter of the Innerstead Sprawl. The same two beefy guards were standing watch outside, the only outward sign that this was anything other than just another low tavern, the same dwarven bartender with the half-burned beard, the same clientele sitting in the same booths. They might have just stepped out for a breath of air.</p><p>It was almost absurdly easy to get into the bar proper - they hadn’t even needed to do any serious work just to find the password, had run across that quite by chance in a sewer. Was that usual, for an organisation like this? Caleb hadn’t seen enough criminal syndicates to tell. This would be his first, in fact, which after the Knights of Requital felt like a refreshing novelty.</p><p>The entrance wasn’t well-hidden either, but then, why would it need to be, here in the heart of the Gentleman’s power with his men guarding the front door. Probably there would be other ways out down below, in case of a raid, or else the Gentleman was confident enough in his power to be sure that the legal authorities would not come after him. Just a chain-operated trapdoor in the back room, and they were in.</p><p>For a moment, Caleb felt a sick sort of lurching through the bond, a faint echo of what he’d felt in the mines in Alfield, before they’d realised the nature of their situation. Mollymauk, it seemed, did not deal well with tight spaces.</p><p>Going down the steps felt like stepping into another world, so long as that other world also contained a tavern. </p><p>It was, it had to be said, a much nicer tavern than the upstairs of the Evening Nip - Caleb could hear music being played somewhere nearby, and looking around he could see balconies for the musicians, all of it built onto the rock of the cavern. Was this a natural formation, he wondered, or a purpose-dug tunnel, and how long had it been here? He couldn’t tell.</p><p>It wasn’t deep enough that it was a particularly long walk down to the main cavern, though the tight quarters of the narrow spiral staircase made it awkward. Much as Caleb might have appreciated another body between him and Nott and whatever was waiting for them down in the cavern, he couldn’t help but be relieved that Yasha wasn’t with them - elbow room was at enough of a premium as things were.</p><p>There was a table at the foot of the stairs, and the gruff-looking human sitting at it was already turning a suspicious look on the six of them, and, further back, a tabaxi in grey and maroon robes seemed to have spotted them and was making in their direction, the candlelight highlighting darker spots against the blackness of her fur like a watermark on silk.</p><p>“Halt, friends!” she said as she turned the corner. “I do not recognise- <em> Lucien </em>?”</p><p>For a moment, Caleb didn’t know what she was talking about. Terror spiked through him, and for a moment he couldn’t think why, the feeling buzzing in his ears and tensing his muscles, and for a moment he was seized by the sudden wild urge to draw his swords and just cut his way out-</p><p>No. Not <em> his </em>swords.</p><p>“You’re alive,” the Tabaxi rasped out, her voice shaking, her eyes fixed on Mollymauk- </p><p>On <em> Lucien </em>, apparently.</p><p>Apparently Caleb wasn’t the only one of their party using a false name. Not, he reminded himself sharply, that that was any concern of his. He hadn’t told Mollymauk- Lucien- whichever he preferred- his real name either. That thought shouldn’t send another, sharper pulse of guilt through Caleb- It hadn’t been a deliberate deception, and Mollymauk, after all, had been the one to insist that they owed nothing to each other…</p><p>“I’m sorry, friend,” Mollymauk was saying now, nothing in his voice betraying the fact that Caleb could feel his heart hammering as if it were his own, feel the dread and the awful realisation weighing him down. “I’ve got one of those faces people just tend to recognise-”</p><p>In one terrified, punch-drunk moment, Caleb caught himself wondering whether Mollymauk had ever expected that line to work-</p><p>The tabaxi wavered for a moment, her tail quivering with excitement. Her hands darted to cover her mouth for a moment and then pulled away before she launched herself forwards, flinging her arms around Mollymauk so tightly that it might’ve lifted Caleb off his feet.</p><p>“Lucien-!”</p><p>Caleb felt Mollymauk’s terror spike and then freeze as he forced his whole body to relax, hugging the tabaxi back with every outside appearance of happiness even as his mind, brushing up against Caleb’s, was one raw and screaming nerve.</p><p>Something-</p><p>Something was very wrong here.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Another long one, and a bit more canon-dialogue-heavy. I am sorry, we are going to start moving past that soon.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>For a moment, Molly couldn’t speak, his body working on autopilot, dragging his screaming brain along after it. He had been hugged. The thing to do, then, was hug back, and take advantage of the fact that the tabaxi, whoever she was, couldn’t see his face to school his expression into something approaching ‘pleased to see her’.</p><p>“It has been- it has been too long,” the tabaxi said, pulling away to look Molly in the face, her paws still resting on her shoulders. “Two ye-”</p><p>“Far too long,” Molly agreed, a bit too heartily. Even to his own ears, it didn’t sound terribly convincing.</p><p>“Two years.” The tabaxi gave a breathless little laugh, one paw coming up to catch at Molly’s curls. “Look at you! You grew out your hair!”</p><p>Molly extemporised wildly. “Ah, yes, it’s been...it’s been a- quite a- quite an interesting two years.”</p><p>“And you are covered in tattoos!”</p><p><em> No, really, I hadn’t noticed </em>, part of Molly’s brain chittered inanely.</p><p>“It’s...uh…we’ll catch up,” he said quickly, with entirely feigned enthusiasm. That should buy them a bit of time, and maybe give him a moment to get the rest of the Nein caught up on this, and come up with some story to explain it to them. “We need a table, we need drinks- and for me and my compatriots…”</p><p>The tabaxi was already nodding. “Of course, you are- These are your friends now?”</p><p>She sounded far, far too confused for Mollymauk’s liking, at the idea that he might have <em> friends </em> . Shit, fuck, balls, <em> what </em>had he stepped into?</p><p>“It’s a long story, and- and I can’t tell you everything right now. You know how it is.”</p><p>Or at least, she’d assume she did enough not to ask too many questions. Be vague, avoid details, give just enough that she could fill in the rest for herself, then get out of here and never, ever come back. He could do that.</p><p>“...very well,” the tabaxi said, though she didn’t look altogether satisfied with the answer. She didn’t <em> need </em>to be satisfied, Molly reminded himself, just so long as it worked. As she hurried off around the corner, past the hulking ogre bouncer and into the tavern proper, Molly caught Fjord by the shoulder.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he hissed. “This is my nightmare, please just go with it, it’s Lucien, pass it on.”</p><p>Caleb, though, was already eyeing Molly distrustfully, Molly could feel the worry through the bond, even cutting through the usual background haze of guilt and anxiety.</p><p>“Mollymauk, who was that?”</p><p>“I-” Molly stopped himself. “I...it’s complicated,” he looked around wildly for inspiration, and caught sight, suddenly, of Yasha, standing right behind Caleb, just as if she’d been with them all along.</p><p>Oh, thank the Moonweaver she was here. Yasha was here. Yasha was here, and if they had to cut their way out when the tabaxi figured out he wasn’t the person she wanted to see, they’d...probably still die, honestly, but he’d rather do that in Yasha’s company than anyone else’s. He was laughing, he realised suddenly, high-pitched and a little desperate and nearly giddy with relief to have her there.</p><p>“Yasha!”</p><p>She gave an awkward little smile. “Hey. So?”</p><p>Molly managed a very weak answering grin, putting out a hand to rest on her arm.</p><p>“It’s- I’m apparently- It’s Lucien from two years ago,” he babbled, “From two years ago. Ah- It’s Lucien, remember. It’s been ages!”</p><p>“...okay, it’s been a- it’s been a minute.” Yasha nodded. “Hey,” she added, “You guys walked right past me in the bar upstairs, so I decided to…”</p><p>“You are like a bad penny,” Caleb observed, still sounding faintly shell-shocked. Molly really hoped the rest of them would be self-aware enough to remember that all of them had things they didn’t want coming out after this. He wasn’t going to put money on it, but he <em> hoped </em>they were.</p><p>“We did not walk right past you!” Nott protested. “We looked around! You’re big, we would have seen you!”</p><p>“I’ve been right behind you the whole time,” Yasha said innocently. “I don’t know how you didn’t know I was here.”<br/>Molly wanted to just...collapse onto her shoulder and scream for a few hours, but not with an audience.</p><p>“I’m so glad to see you,” he said, and was amazed at how little his voice cracked.</p><p>Yasha smiled, and reached out to pull him close with an arm around the shoulders.</p><p>“I’m glad to see you too, Mollymauk.”</p><p>Molly swallowed. “It’s Lucien,” he said, forcing the words out. “It’s Lucien.” He reached up to squeeze the hand on his shoulder, and felt Yasha grip back, her firm, cold, callused hand a terrible comfort in his.</p><p>“Lucien,” Yasha repeated.</p><p>Molly looked around at the rest of the group. “I’ll explain later,” he said quickly in an undertone. “Just- go with it, please.”</p><p>“Mollymauk,” Caleb asked, equally low. “Are you- Should we be afraid of this woman? She- She seemed friendly, but I understand that is not- That these situations can look very different on the surface to what they actually are.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Fjord agreed. “I don’t mind rolling with this name Lucien, but...well, what he said. This going to bring us any extra trouble?”</p><p>Molly mustered some brittle approximation of his usual brightness. “I don’t know. We’ll find out. Just- Go with it, I’ll explain later.”</p><p>Fjord caught his eye, and nodded. “All right?”<br/>“And it all makes sense to you?” Caleb was frowning at him, Molly could <em> feel </em>his mind working on the problem, almost like a physical force, as if Caleb might pry their connection open and look into Molly’s mind directly. A crawling feeling of unease twisted in his stomach.</p><p>“I’ll explain later,” he repeated, his voice unrecognisable even to his own ears with the force of his panic.</p><p>It wasn’t as though Molly hadn’t known that there would probably be people out there who remembered...whoever had had this body before. It wasn’t even that he hadn’t known that there was a chance he might run into some of them, if the carnival ever passed by Shadycreek Run again.</p><p>He just hadn’t ever thought it would <em> matter </em>. Whoever that person had been, he’d ended up in a shallow grave in the northern forests without so much as a winding-sheet for the body, and if anyone had cared enough to look for him, they hadn’t looked all that hard. It had frightened Molly, in the beginning, the thought that a person could be so entirely forgotten. Then Gustav had sat him down for a talk, and Molly had seen the potential in it - this new person could be whoever and whatever he wanted to be, without any ties to hold him back. Nobody else had cared about them, so why should Molly?</p><p>This- This was so much worse.</p><p>“This club is awesome,” Beau muttered.</p><p>Molly shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat, hating the way they shook. “I <em> hate </em>you.”</p><p>Of course, that didn’t stop her and Nott from wondering aloud about whether they should all adopt false names here, and honestly, Molly didn’t know that that wasn’t a good idea. It’d be harder for anyone looking for this Lucien person to find him if they didn’t know who he was travelling with either. Or- At this point, it might be easier to have them all killed right now.</p><p>He didn’t realise he’d said that aloud until he felt the spike of alarm from Caleb, and saw his...whatever they were to each other now...staring at him like he’d just grown another head.</p><p>“Oh, god,” he muttered. “It’s going to be fine. I’m not panicking,” he lied. “Let’s go get drinks.”</p><p>Across the bar, he heard the sound of a clap, and when he looked around, the tabaxi had cleared out a table for them.</p><p>“This way! I found a table for everyone.”</p><p>If they had actually been friends, and not two strangers, one of whom happened to share a face and body with someone the other had liked, Molly would probably have been quite pleased to know this woman, he thought. Act like she’s Yasha, he reminded himself. What would you do if this was Yasha, and you hadn’t seen her in two years?</p><p>He approached the table, trying not to feel as if he was walking to the gallows, and went in for another hug just to buy a little more time.</p><p>“How have you been?” he asked, pulling away just a little more quickly than he would if he had meant it. “It’s been ages!”</p><p>The tabaxi breathed out, long and pained. “Oh- Too long.” Her eyes flicked down towards the table. “I- apologise for using your old name. <em> Nonagon </em>, it is a pleasure to see you again.”</p><p>Something about the way she said ‘Nonagon’ made the hairs go up on the back of Molly’s neck.</p><p>He made a vague, dismissive sort of gesture. “Oh, who can keep track these days? Again, a long story…”</p><p>The tabaxi leaned in. “Nonagon, what happened. We watched you <em> die </em>.”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh, shit.</p><p>Yeah, he was going to have to explain that, wasn’t he?<br/>“That...is a story for another day and another drink. What did you see? God, I- I don’t know what that looked like from the other end of things.”</p><p>The tabaxi rubbed at her face with the pads of her paw.</p><p>“Well...it all went belly-up two years ago. We- We- Uh- You told us to scatter and vanish if it didn’t- You know, if things went wrong and wait until you returned. We buried your ass in the woods outside of the hideout. I mean-”</p><p>“It may not have necessarily been my arse that you buried,” Molly hedged, attempting the knowing smile that always worked on rubes lined up for a tarot reading.</p><p>The tabaxi looked him up and down. “...apparently.”</p><p>“I had a few tricks up my sleeve,” Molly agreed, hoping she wasn’t going to ask what those tricks had been.</p><p>The tabaxi laughed, her eyes still fixed on him. She looked- overwhelmed, delighted, and Molly bit down on a stab of guilt. No. This wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. He was sorry she’d lost her friend, but that- Molly didn’t owe that dead person anything, whoever ‘Lucien’ had been to her.</p><p>“Well, that- that spell-spitter lady from the capital, she said you were gone, and she took the book and left, and her contract said she was in the right and that we knew better than to go toe-to-toe with her and her ilk, so…”</p><p>“Obviously,” Molly said, which was usually safe enough, and took a sip of his drink, trying to remind himself of all the reasons why downing the whole thing right now and possibly then stealing everyone else’s was a bad idea right now. “Is everybody else all right? I know it- it’s been a while. I had to stay underground.”</p><p>Cree paused. “I- Ah- Wait.”</p><p>Her eyes had fixed on Mollymauk’s hands, wrapped around his mug. On his left hand.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>With shaking paws, the tabaxi reached out, and then glanced up at Molly’s face and snatched her paws back as if burnt.</p><p>“You got married?”</p><p>It was said in the same incredulous tone with which she had greeted his hair, his tattoos, his friends, and all at once the urge to brush it aside and tell her something close to the truth - it was a magical accident, nothing more, and they were working to find a way out of it - dissipated like mist.</p><p>“I...did, yes,” he said, lacing his fingers together around the cup to show the ring off to best advantage.</p><p>The tabaxi’s mouth opened and shut. Her eyes flicked over the rest of the group, their hands, before finally settling on Caleb’s. </p><p><em> Just go with it </em>, Molly begged, even knowing that Caleb would not hear, that that wasn’t how the bond worked.</p><p>“I apologise,” Caleb said, shifting a little under her scrutiny. “I’m not very observant. I missed your name.”</p><p>The tabaxi’s yellow-green eyes narrowed as they fixed on him, weighing and measuring and finding wanting, and something in Molly bristled at the implication that she had the right to decide whether or not Caleb was good enough for- not for him. For Lucien, whoever that had been, and so far Molly was not enjoying finding out.</p><p>“Where are my manners,” he agreed, gesturing to the tabaxi, who paused a second, eyes flickering to Molly and then back to Caleb, and then back again.</p><p>“My apologies,” she said, after a few tense moments. “My name is Cree.”</p><p>“Cree,” Caleb repeated, with a little nod.</p><p>“I am a member of the- well, the family around...how-” she paused. “I...I don’t understand. How can you- How can you be-”</p><p>Molly raised his eyebrows. “Is there any reason I shouldn’t be?”</p><p>There was a long, still pause.</p><p>“...no,” Cree said slowly. “...no, I suppose not.” Her eyes caught his, and held them for a moment, before she gave the very slightest of nods. “How- How did this come about?”</p><p>Molly paused. Shit, fuck, she hadn’t given him anything like enough to come up with a plausible story from whole cloth yet.</p><p>When in doubt, there is only one truth, and, suitably embroidered, it works even better than lies, he remembered Gustav telling him once.</p><p>“Well, I…” he coughed. “I...after everything that happened, I was pretty weak,” he admitted, hating the feeling of the others’ eyes on him. “Dangerously weak, really. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t use any of my abilities - still can’t, really,” he lied. “I try, but...the power doesn’t come the way it used to. Maybe whatever the mage did wiped it out. I don’t know. I’d have been dead, if no-one had found me. But they did, and...well, what with one thing and another…”</p><p>Shit, was he selling this? Another wave of panic rolled over him- And a hand settled on his arm. He looked around, to see Caleb - thank all the gods for his quick thinking - looking at him with an oddly soft expression, though his eyes were still sharp and calculating. He smiled back, helpless not to, dizzy with relief even as a little part of him thought: <em> Good. Keep selling this. </em></p><p>“My friends and I were...travelling...in the area,” Caleb supplied, looking back at Cree. “I think this is as much as I have ever heard about- about Lucien’s life before we met him.”</p><p>Cree paused. “...then perhaps I should not say more. If Lucien wished you to know, then he would have told you.”</p><p>“It's...painful, to talk about,” Molly said quickly. “Especially given...everything I lost. But I trust them. They’ve...they’ve earned my trust. The others?”</p><p>The rest of whatever group Cree had formed with him were, it turned out, scattered over half of Wildemount, one of them dead, and she only had a firm location for one of them - Molly resolved to never go anywhere near Nogvurot if he could help it. Caleb’s hand was still on Molly’s arm, he could feel the weight of it. It helped, a little, the same way as Yasha’s solid presence on his other side, the weight of his swords at his hips.</p><p>“We can travel there,” Cree was saying now. “I- I can send a message and have her come down to us-”</p><p>“No, no, I’m...working on something very delicate,” Molly hazarded. “I need everything to be very quiet. And…” he paused. He’d laid the groundwork about his powers just at random, because otherwise it would have been just a bit too much truth, but having done it… “And,” he went on. “I- I don’t...I was sort of hoping I wouldn’t see any of you until after. I- It’s been difficult, coming to terms with being less than I was.”</p><p>He felt Caleb’s hand twitch on his arm, and brought his own up to cover it, lacing their fingers together. He could feel the calluses from a pen on Caleb’s fingers, the roughness of old cuts and rope burns, the dirt ground in so deep that even Pumat Sol’s spell hadn’t been able to get it all out, the ragged edges of his nails.</p><p>“You cannot think that we would cast you off for it.” Cree said, low. “You- I have followed you this far. I can go further.”</p><p>If he had been the man she remembered, it might have been touching.</p><p>“No. It’s kind of you to offer, but…” Molly shook his head, his grip on Caleb’s hand tightening a little. “This is something I need to do on my own.”</p><p>Cree’s eyes flicked over the rest of their party.</p><p>“...very well, Nonagon,” she said, with a respectful little dip of the head that made Molly’s skin crawl to see it.</p><p>“So, how do you and Lucien know each other, exactly?” Jester jumped in, leaning forwards with her chin on her hands. “He never tells us <em> anything </em>about himself.”</p><p>“Yeah, I was wondering about that too,” Beau agreed, shooting a look in Molly’s direction that Molly didn’t care to try and interpret.</p><p>“I wasn’t,” Yasha put in. “I know all of it. So you can just tell me if you want to.”</p><p>Molly jerked a thumb at her. “That’s actually fair.”</p><p>“Me too!” Nott put in. “We- We heard the whole story of what happened, so you can absolutely trust us.”</p><p>Molly considered it. “That’s...less fair, but they might as well know as not.”</p><p>Cree seemed not to quite know where to begin.</p><p>“Well,” she said cautiously, “We, um...we were all part of the same order at one point, and, ah, we splintered off. Luci- <em> Nonagon </em>had a different path in mind for us, so we...ah...we went north to Shadycreek Run and we started the Tomb Takers and, uh- It’s just so good to see you,” she added, turning a helpless smile on Molly.</p><p>He wanted to squirm, didn’t quite dare. “It’s good to be seen again,” he lied. “But, again, it’s got to be very quiet right now.” A desperate, hysteric laugh bubbled up in his throat. He tried to muzzle it, turn it into something natural. “It’s been like three other names since the last time I saw you.”</p><p>Cree shook her head. “I- I should inform the others. Not- If you are certain you cannot come back to us until this task is done, then you must do that, but- they should know, at least, that the ritual backfired. That the mage betrayed us.”</p><p>The thought of yet more cultists flocking to him, looking for their lost prophet - seriously, nobody who wasn’t <em> deeply </em> pretentious insisted on a title like ‘Nonagon’, what did that even <em> mean </em>? - filled Molly with a sort of cold dread.</p><p>“Please- Please keep it quiet for now,” he said quickly. “That book caused more trouble than you think, and I’m not...we will get revenge,” he added. “But I want to be there for it, and I’m not strong enough yet. I just need a bit more time, and I can’t- can’t do it if she suspects I’m out there. She’ll want to finish the job.”</p><p>Dear Moonweaver he hoped this mage wasn’t just some jobbing mercenary like themselves, who’d had no real motive beyond the natural spellcaster’s magpie-like passion for books - they’d got into enough trouble about that with Caleb, but the thought of this mysterious organisation hunting down some poor nobody who just happened to have had the bad luck to be hired for this ritual didn’t sit well with him.</p><p>Cree inclined her head. “Of course.”</p><p>“But, yeah,” Molly added, “Let me know where they are and I’ll get a hold of them. When the time is right.”</p><p>Cree leaned closer, her tail twitching. “So...it was deliberate, then? What went wrong? If we were to do the ritual again - once you are recovered, of course, but…”</p><p>Molly sighed. “That’s- Again, mixed company and public company, but…”</p><p>“No, you can tell us about the ritual!” Nott interrupted. For a moment, Molly gave serious thought to strangling her. “Ritual? Remind me what it was again? There's been so many rituals lately!”</p><p>“I’m not-” Molly cut in. “Not...sure it’s the sort of thing you survive getting wrong twice. I think I was pushing it with once, even. I’ll need to interrogate her before we try again.”</p><p>“Of course.” Cree nodded. “Zoran will get it out of her, if anyone can.”</p><p>Molly...did not like the sound of that.</p><p>“Were-” Caleb started, then broke off. “You were mentioning this group, the Tomb Takers. You had another name before. Were you a group, and- and Lucien joined you at some point?”</p><p>For a moment, Cree looked quite taken aback, and shot another glance at Molly, but she rallied quickly enough.</p><p>“Well, ah, he led us away from the original order. They were a bit...ah...clouded. We had a new path.”</p><p>“And what was the name of the original order you were a part of?” Beau asked, leaning back a little on the bench, one hand cupped around her mouth like she was lighting the world’s smallest pipe.</p><p>“Not the Tomb Takers - that was the splinter group, right?” Nott piped up.</p><p>“You don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to tell them, that’s all right,” Molly said, as casually as he was able, watching as something in Cree’s eyes closed up. You didn’t last long as a carnie without a good sense of when you’d pushed someone too far for them to buy what you were selling, and it looked like that was the point they’d just hit.</p><p>“Was he your new path?” Yasha asked, jabbing a thumb back at Molly. </p><p>Cree paused. “He- He brought us onto a new path, yes.”</p><p>“What was your unifying trait or pursuit?” Caleb asked, and Molly could feel the fierceness of that curiosity, even as the thought of learning more made Molly’s own gut churn with nauseous anxiety.</p><p>“Foolishness in thinking I knew what I was doing,” he retorted, with a heavy sigh, and looked around to try and meet Caleb’s eyes. Their hands, he realised all at once, were still joined. He pulled away, and told himself firmly that he didn’t miss the coolness of Caleb’s palms against his.</p><p>For a moment, he felt something twist through the bond, and then Caleb nodded.</p><p>“Later,” he said in an undertone, and that was probably the best that Molly could have hoped for.</p><p>“That is not a good answer-!” Nott protested.</p><p>“<em> Later </em> ,” Caleb repeated. “We- This is a reunion of old friends. I am sure they have...have better things to do than rehash old times for our benefit, <em> ja </em>?”</p><p>“This is all well and good and kinda fucking boring,” Fjord put in, “I couldn’t help but notice that surly-looking crew up there, who might that be?”</p><p>“Oh-” Cree’s eyes flicked back to Molly. “These are all members of the- the Gentleman’s troupe, as am I.”</p><p>She looked around, and Molly followed her gaze to the blue-skinned, sweaty-looking man with a dark, pointed beard in the far corner, seated next to a burly, glaring goliath woman.</p><p>“The Gentleman,” Cree said, gesturing towards him.</p><p>Molly’s heart sank. Well, so much for running away and never coming back. He leaned forward on his elbows, craning his head to look past Cree at the man in the corner.</p><p>“You work for the Gentleman these days?”</p><p>Something wavered in Cree’s eyes.</p><p>“Well- We had to find work,” she said, the words spilling out one after the other as if she was expecting to be cut off at any moment. “We didn’t know if you were ever coming back. We thought- So we had to move on. We knew you’d eventually return,” she added, faster still, almost desperate. “I just did not know how long and we had to make ends meet.”</p><p>That was-</p><p>What sort of person had Lucien <em> been </em>, that Cree still thought she owed him- what had that even been? An apology, an explanation, something of both? Cree was nearly cringing.</p><p>“How is it, working for- for the Gentleman?” he asked, rather than any of that.</p><p>The look of relief that spread across Cree’s face was almost painful to see. “Oh- Work- Work is fine-”</p><p>Of course, it was then that the Gentleman decided to call them all over to dance attendance on him instead. It was almost a relief, right up until he called Cree over and had her take their blood.</p><p>Molly still wasn’t exactly up on precisely what it was about his blood that meant he could do what he did. He had a hundred stories about it - family curse was a popular one, or some kind of massive breeding programme, trying to produce the right sort of blood - but in truth, he was as lost as anyone.</p><p>He would, however, have bet his coat on it that Cree knew exactly what it was, and if she looked, and found that it was still there-</p><p>He could work with that. Maybe it was still there, but he couldn’t touch it. Molly was good at bullshit - this whole evening proved it. He could come up with something, he told himself, as he watched the vials get tucked away. He always had before.</p><p>Of course, then Fjord staked all their lives on a card game - and won, so fair play to him - and the Gentleman drank a whole phial of Nott’s homemade acid just to prove a point. Oh, and apparently not only had the Gentleman been pulling all of their strings by way of Kara the half-elf, but Molly and Beau were both wanted for questioning and, somehow, Molly didn’t think it would take anyone very long to track them down.</p><p>And if they wanted out of <em> that </em>, they were going to have to traipse through some sort of cursed cave system at the end of an underground river, which may or may not also be the site of dangerous magical experimentation.</p><p>Molly did not have a problem with caves. He was fine with caves. Really. Nothing about the tight quarters or the crushing weight of the earth overhead made him in any way anxious or distressed. Really. He barely remembered being under the earth, it hadn’t lasted all that long - thank these Tomb Takers for having buried him shallow, he guessed - and the crushing emptiness had been worse, anyway. It was <em> fine </em>.</p><p>Still, at least Horris was getting smuggled out of the city. Unless they were just planning to slit his throat and throw him in this underground river, which seemed about equally possible. Still, it was better odds than he’d get with the crownsguard. And he’d managed to get the name ‘Lucien’ suppressed as thoroughly as he could outside this bar. Inside...well,  he’d just have to not come back all that often. Find some excuse. Possibly tragically ‘die’ in this cave system, that seemed like it might work, so long as there was another way out.</p><p>Fjord and Beau went off to question some of the Gentleman’s lackeys...flunkies...minions...Molly wasn’t aware of the proper classification, but it was some combination of those three. Possibly ‘henchpeople’, that one generally worked...but as soon as they were out of earshot, Molly pulled Yasha aside.</p><p>“Yasha, do I deal with this or do I not deal with this?”</p><p>He hadn’t seen any eyes on Cree, but she was a tabaxi - all that fur would hide any ink she might’ve got. Or...whatever it was the eyes were. Molly didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.</p><p>Yasha shrugged. “Well, I think you should deal with this,” she replied, utterly flat. She might’ve been remarking on the weather, or whether the horses pulling the circus carts would bolt. </p><p>“I don’t <em> want </em>to deal with this.”</p><p>“Does any of this sound familiar to you from the past?” Yasha prodded.</p><p>Molly let out a long huff of air. “I hate this.”</p><p>He stood, and made for the bar, and Cree.</p><p>She smiled when she saw him coming, a sudden, flashing, furtive thing.</p><p>“A lifetime ago,” Molly said, settling an elbow on the bar and looking her in the face.</p><p>She gave the slightest of nods. “Indeed. I can tell you it’s so good to see you.”</p><p>“I have a weird question,” Molly said, praying that this would work. “And I apologise for it. What happened...I told you I was weakened, but that...what happened to me...the spell I used to get away...I know I wasn’t there for as long as you thought I was. I missed...how a bit of everything ended, in the end. I hate to ask, but...I was long gone before anything really started to go down. How- how did everything end? Can you just- I’ll explain why in a moment.”</p><p>Cree reached up again to rub at her face. Did the gesture seem familiar to him just because it was a tic she’d displayed already this evening, or- or was that cold voice Lucien’s? Had he been carrying that with him, all this time?</p><p>The story she told took his mind off that, for a moment, and made things a hundred times worse. It was the same story she had given the Nein - she hadn’t been lying, then - but...more detailed, more embroidered. Enough to make Molly quite certain that, whatever it was she and Lucien had been involved with together, it was shadier than anything Molly had ever touched.</p><p>“-I suppose…” she cleared her throat. “If it was the ritual that did this to you, it must have been her. She was...I did not know her so well as you did, but you told me, before it happened, that she coveted the power of the Eyes of Nine - <em> your </em>power, Nonagon. She must have sabotaged the ritual, to keep you from having it-”</p><p>“That’s...one possibility,” Molly said carefully. “I’m going to have to find her again at some point. The reason I’ve stayed quiet, other than...well, what I’ve already told you- It was never going to work. Somebody was working against me. I don’t know who,” he added quickly, “But I can’t trust anyone. I saw how you reacted to seeing me and it was- I’m willing to believe it wasn’t you who turned. But it could’ve been- It could’ve been her, but it could’ve been one of us. And with me weakened like this, I’m an easy target if they want to take another shot. That’s why I need you to keep it quiet. <em> Please </em>.” He rested his head on his hand, rubbing at the base of his horns with one finger, a self-soothing tic he’d never quite managed to lose. “There will come a moment when I can tell you everything,” he lied. “But...it’s so complicated. Please just keep it quiet for now.”</p><p>“Of course.” Cree did not look entirely convinced, still, her tail flattened low against the ground. Then she glanced back across at the rest of the Nein. “I...what do you mean to do with your new husband, once he has restored your abilities? He does not seem the type to easily give you up, once your game is over.”</p><p>Molly blinked. “I- I’m sorry?”</p><p>“Was I not supposed to have guessed?” Cree smiled for a moment, a flash of needle-sharp fangs. “Kara told the Gentleman of certain of his abilities - a wizard, with a talent for transmutation? And...well. It was a pretty story, I’m sure that he believes it, but we both know you have a higher calling.”</p><p>So far as Molly was concerned, Lucien could stick his ‘higher calling’ up his arse - notwithstanding that it was also Molly’s arse and he was a lot choosier than was generally believed about what got near it - but he had to admit, it was a useful story.</p><p>“You...appear to have a better grasp on the situation than I gave you credit for,” he lied, forcing a smile. “It was a stroke of luck finding them. But- The point is, I don’t know how long that will take. It could be another two years, maybe longer. It might take a lifetime. Nobody would fault you for deciding to just walk away now.”</p><p><em> Please, </em> he thought. <em> Please, walk away now. </em></p><p>But, no. He’d judged her right.</p><p>Cree bristled, her tail thrashing. “I said I would follow you, and I meant it!” she hissed. “You <em> are </em>the Nonagon, power or no. All you need to do is say the word.”</p><p>“Well,” Molly said, low. “I’m saying it, and the word is <em> wait </em>. We’re only going to get one shot at this. I’m not wasting it by going in half-cocked this time. We clear?”</p><p>Cree nodded again, a little jerkily. “We- We are.”</p><p>He stepped in for another hug then, because it meant he wouldn’t have to speak, and because...he really did feel bad for her. A little bit, anyway. He couldn’t be her Lucien, though, and he didn’t want to be - just the little she’d told him was enough for him to be even more sure of that. She stiffened against him, a little, in shock or surprise, and then just melted into it, her arms coming around him.</p><p>“It’s been too long,” he said into her ear.</p><p>He felt, more than heard, the answering purr.</p><p>“It’s good to see you,” she whispered, and then let go.</p><p>It was all a bit too much.</p><p>Dammit, why couldn’t it have been an old enemy he’d run into? He could’ve dealt with one of those. Or at least run away from them. He wouldn’t have had to picture, all of a sudden, Cree at this bar as the years rolled by, getting older and finally dying, still waiting for Lucien, who would never come back.</p><p>“I’m sorry for everything,” Molly blurted out, unable to quite help it, and patted her shoulder like the strangers they were, and headed off further up the bar, feeling Cree’s eyes on his back at every step.</p><p>He ordered another round of drinks, just to delay the moment he’d have to go back to the Nein’s table and face their questions - because there would be questions. Molly would have questions after something like that, and he generally tried to avoid poking into other people’s pasts for exactly this reason. Beau especially didn’t seem like the type to take all of this on trust.</p><p>Jester had already flitted off by the time Molly got there - probably leaving pamphlets to the Traveller all over the Evening Nip. He just hoped she wasn’t going to draw any dicks anywhere the Gentleman might see her do it, because he really, truly doubted that the guy had her sort of sense of humour - but Yasha was, and it took the reminder of Cree’s eyes burning into the back of his neck to stop Molly from just burying his face in her shoulder and breaking down right then and there.</p><p>“Here, drink this, I’m told they’re stupid,” he said instead, half-collapsing onto the bench next to Yasha, and downed his own mug in one go rather than look any of them in the eye.</p><p>“Uh, Molly, you have- Sorry,” Beau gave the single fakest laugh Molly had ever heard in his two years of life. “Lucien.”</p><p>“No, that’s not it either,” Fjord cut in.</p><p>“Sorry, Non- Nonga- Nongatek?”</p><p>Molly was not in the mood to fake a smile right now. “Yup, Lucien for the moment. We’ll talk about it later.”</p><p>Yasha reached out to touch his elbow, just tentatively. “Do you want us to call you Lucien, or do you want us to call you Molly?”</p><p>Molly tried to take another sip of his drink, and found it was empty. Well, that was just great.</p><p>“In here, we’re Lucien.”</p><p>Caleb was nearly radiating worry again through the bond, scraping down every one of Molly’s nerves, but when he spoke up, it wasn’t with questions.</p><p>“I think we should maybe table this,” Caleb said. “Until we can be sure of avoiding unfriendly ears. Can you tell us what she can do with the blood she took from us? Could she use it to spy on us?”</p><p>Molly let out a long breath. “Probably. The Gentleman certainly talked like she could.”</p><p>“Can she use it to harm us in any way?”</p><p>“I…” Molly paused. “I don’t know. Probably.”</p><p>“Could you trade on your...connection...with her to recover the blood?”</p><p>Molly stopped to consider that too. “I <em> really </em>don’t want to test that.”</p><p>“She seemed, like, real into you,” Beau said, slow and wondering, as if feeling out a wildly unfamiliar concept. Which seemed a bit unfair to Molly. Plenty of people had been ‘real into him’. Well. Real into the idea of being able to say they had fucked a tiefling, but close enough. “But not in, like, an into you like ‘I want to tap that’ kind of into you, but in, like, an ‘I’ve watched you walk on water’ type of into you.”</p><p>“Yeah, that was a weird amount of into you, wasn’t it?”</p><p>Molly...really, really didn’t want to think about the implications of that, but unfortunately his mug was still empty and everyone else had already claimed theirs, so there went the idea of stealing Beau’s drink.</p><p>There were more questions, mostly about the name, and how Cree had reacted, and Molly...Molly had no good answers for them. He had no bad answers for them. He wished this had all happened sometime when he’d been on his own, or it had just been him and Yasha. He didn’t want the Nein thinking that that- that person that had made Cree so excited, and so afraid, had been him. He didn’t want it colouring their image of him. Molly <em> liked </em> the person they saw him as. That person was pretty great. He didn’t know what the hell Lucien’s deal had been, but it wasn’t <em> his </em>.</p><p>Thankfully they got distracted after too long, first by Yasha and her disappearances, even if Molly had <em> told </em>them it’d be fine, that she’d be back when she was back and she had her own stuff to take care of. Still, it was a relief to know that she’d be there for a little while. He got the feeling he was going to need her tonight especially.</p><p>Molly was barely paying attention as the others questioned Kara. He had too much on his mind. He’d almost forgotten what they’d come here to do in the first place, in the shock of seeing Cree- or rather, of Cree seeing him. He could’ve passed her on the street and never realised it. He might’ve preferred that, actually.</p><p>He barely remembered enough to talk to Yasha about her new sword, the one he’d saved for her, even if it turned out she was a bit less enthused about it than he’d thought she’d be. He was only half-attending as Nott tried to talk to the ogre doorman, his mind buzzing like a hornet’s nest without any clear idea or direction, just one long panicked drone.</p><p>He knew that he must’ve walked back to the Leaky Tap with the rest of them, just because he couldn’t think of any other way he could’ve got there and somehow he didn’t think the rest of them would’ve bothered carrying him through the streets of Zadash. Well, maybe Yasha would, but she’d probably have asked before picking him up, and maybe that would’ve jolted him back to himself.</p><p>He didn’t come back to himself until they were back in Beau, Yash and Jester’s room at the Leaky Tap, and that was terrifying enough all on its own. It was too close to those first days at the circus, a haze of grey terror, unfamiliar people  moving around him, knowing he ought to understand what they were saying to him, but couldn’t, so helpless that he knew he’d have died out there in the woods if Gustav and Desmond hadn’t found him first.</p><p>For a little while, he’d thought that figuring out how to get Horris, blindfolded, through the Evening Nip and out of the city without drawing attention to their already <em> blindingly </em>colourful company steering a blindfolded man through the streets, had been distraction enough, but really, he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up.</p><p>They got Horris out of the room first, thank all the gods, because this was going to be bad enough just talking to the Nein without having to spill his entire, very brief, life story to a near-total stranger as well.</p><p>He’d meant it when he’d talked about not stealing from the group, both with Nott and with Caleb, and he’d meant it trying to make things up afterwards, and he’d meant it about the group needing to trust each other, but none of that made telling it any easier.</p><p>Casting a truth spell on him was a bit much - it wasn’t as though Molly hadn’t been <em> being </em>truthful, as far as he could, before.</p><p>“He’s telling the truth,” Caleb said, casting a look at Jester. “I- I can tell you. I don’t think we need-”</p><p>“He did it to <em> me </em>,” Nott muttered.</p><p>“Ja, I know, but…” Caleb looked down at her. “You did say that they had a point about us needing to- to act as part of a team, so-”</p><p>Fjord crossed his arms. “Yeah, that’s all very well, but Molly’s been bullshitting us about who he is and where he came from since Trostenwald-”</p><p>“Whereas you have, of course, been entirely honest and forthright about why you keep coughing up saltwater?”</p><p>“I’m still standing right here,” Molly reminded them. “And I <em> was </em>telling the truth. Maybe not all of it - it’s a vague memory. I don't really remember it. It's kind of all jumbled. It's what I've been told, about some of it. But you don’t want all the details, do you?”</p><p>“Yeah, we do!” Beau retorted. “So is that the ritual she was rambling about? The one that went wrong?”</p><p>“I am just saying,” Caleb interrupted, before Molly could reply, “We- We all have pasts. And none of us has been exactly forthcoming-”</p><p>“I told you all where I came from!” Jester protested, looking a little hurt.</p><p>“-None of us except Jester has been exactly forthcoming about where we came from.” Caleb looked around at all of them. “I- I am as curious as any of you, especially if this- if, you know, there really are people after Mollymauk of whom we are not aware, but since, he cannot lie without my picking up on it anyway-”</p><p>“So- Wait, that whole thing down at the Evening Nip- Was he lying then?”</p><p>“Ja. Or- I would not have jumped in if he hadn’t been.” Caleb shifted again, and Molly felt his unease and confusion. Honestly, Molly hadn’t given much thought to <em> why </em>Caleb had backed him up bullshitting Cree. He’d been too grateful, in the moment, and then too preoccupied.</p><p>Still, no time like the present to ask: </p><p>“Yeah, why did you do that?”</p><p>For a moment, he didn’t know if Caleb was going to answer or not, or whether he was under the truth spell too - these things could be funny with the radiuses.</p><p>Then Caleb coughed. “I- Well. You were...were obviously afraid, and it just...seemed the thing to do in the moment. I have done the same for Nott before, so…”</p><p>Oh.</p><p>That was-</p><p>That was unexpected. And...rather marvellous, really.</p><p>Of course, Beau butted in right after that to repeat her question about the ritual, and then it was open season.</p><p>They weren’t asking the right questions, anyway - that person, Lucien, whoever he had been...what was he to Molly, or Molly to him? Same body, same brain, maybe, but whoever he’d been was gone, except for a cold whisper in the back of his mind, and nine eyes, nearly invisible amidst Molly’s own tattoos.</p><p>Caleb wanted to know if he was a good guy or not, and- Honestly, from him, that was a fair question, it wasn’t as though Molly had been covering himself in glory there, however much he may’ve tried, Caleb was not to be won over.</p><p>Molly didn’t know. He was doing his best, wasn’t that enough?  He was trying to find some decent rules to live by, and he didn’t think he’d done that badly. Sure, he screwed up sometimes - who didn’t - and sure, he’d run scams and wasn’t always the most honest, but honesty was only a virtue if the truth was something anyone wanted or needed to hear.</p><p>“I didn’t know you didn’t remember,” Yasha was admitting now, almost shy. “You did a good job of pretending.”</p><p>“Yeah, well.” Molly looked away. “I like pretending. Pretending’s great. I- Who <em> cares </em>who anybody came from?”</p><p>He felt, for a moment, a flicker of something almost like pain, an old and festering thing, and flinched away from it. He tried to catch Caleb’s eye, but Caleb wasn’t looking at him. There was almost a perverse satisfaction in that - he had wanted answers. He couldn’t complain, now he was getting them, if they weren’t quite the answers he’d wanted or expected.</p><p>Not that it stopped the questions - about his weird blood powers, about whether he wanted anything to do with a life that had ended in a shallow grave up near Shadycreek Run, about whether there was anyone in the group he was attracted to - which, he saw what Jester was driving at, and she wasn’t <em> wrong </em>, exactly, but she wasn’t right either. All right, at first glance Caleb hadn’t looked like anything special, but underneath all the dirt he had the sort of good looks that rewarded closer inspection - high cheekbones and hands that managed to be rough and delicate all at once, and hair that had looked dull red-brown at first, but had shown itself bright and coppery under Pumat Sol’s prestidigitation spell. And if he’d been a bit less terrified, maybe Molly might’ve wanted to pin him to the wall under much happier circumstances, but that applied to basically everyone they were travelling with. Well, not Beau, because she’d put him off the moment she started talking. And definitely not Nott, because Molly still wasn’t a hundred percent sure she wasn’t an actual kid, self-appointed mother to a full-grown wizard or not, but everyone else? Quite distractingly attractive.</p><p>Not that it stopped Jester from giggling to herself at his answer, but Molly would much rather that than any more questions about Lucien.</p><p>So, of course, that was what everybody else was asking about. </p><p>It didn’t seem to matter how much he laid it out - that was not him, that was...someone else entirely, someone who had had a different life, different reasons...maybe they’d seemed like good ones to him, but they’d landed him in a shallow grave and Molly had been left to pick up the pieces and make a new life with what he had. And it had been a good life! Molly <em> liked </em>the life he had led, he was content with it, he didn’t need to know what had come before.</p><p>Eventually he managed to get most of them off the subject - <em> most </em>of them, Nott seemed to have some kind of fixation on the bastard almost as bad as Cree’s - and onto questions he could actually answer for them. Occasionally a comment or a question would lead to another awful, fragmented moment of guilt and pain and loathing through the bond - usually whenever Molly brought up the rest of their pasts, and how little he cared for them, so it looked like he’d be doing that a bit less often, just to spare himself the secondhand agony of it, but he couldn’t have said why, or even begun to guess at the baggage there. Which was fine. He’d been telling the truth. He didn’t want anyone else’s problems taking up space in his head, didn’t need them. He could do a good turn here and there without needing to know all the details, that was fine.</p><p>It was much easier, answering questions about his tattoos, about the Moonweaver, about his fortune-telling, even if Beau scoffed at the idea that Molly might actually have wanted to steer a few of those desperate people onto a path that might make them a bit happier.</p><p>“Is there anything about you that you don’t want us to know?” Fjord asked, which was a fair enough question, in that it did give scope to just say ‘yes’ and leave it at that.</p><p>“Yes,” Molly admitted. “Everything. I like...the safety of it, but- and if I had had my way, this would’ve been a conversation for a later date. But I need to protect you and myself from whatever that is, so you need to know that that is a wild card.”</p><p>Fjord nodded. “I appreciate that.”</p><p>Beau gave a funny sort of roll of the shoulders, like she wanted to stretch but didn’t want to open herself up by uncrossing her arms. It looked uncomfortable. </p><p>“Well, this was fun.”</p><p>“I feel like we should do this every night,” Nott agreed. “But I will say this: Lucien?”</p><p>Molly grimaced. “It’s a terrible name.”</p><p>Honestly, if he hadn’t already been pretty certain that the previous occupant of this body had been an arse, that name would have clinched it. What- Had his parents hated him or something? Or had he actually been fool enough to call himself that on purpose?</p><p>“It’s terrible!”</p><p>“I don’t want to ever know who that person is.”</p><p>“It’s like a kid with, like, a soft moustache that not like a real-”</p><p>“I’m <em> Molly </em>,” Molly tried to say over her, and failed.</p><p>“You know, like a-”</p><p>Okay, apparently he was going to have to spell this out.</p><p>“Let me make this abundantly clear,” Molly said, as flatly as he could. “My name is Molly. That person is dead, and not me. It’s just a person who had this body. They abandoned it. It’s mine now.”</p><p>Nott’s long ears twitched a little. She glanced down.</p><p>“I- I think you need to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going,” she said after a moment. Molly’s heart sank. Why- He knew where he had been! He’d been at the Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities, and they’d been all over. He hadn’t been anywhere before that, and that was fine. “And I- I, um, respect your- your feelings, but I-”</p><p>“And I feel that you’re fretfully ignorant and filled with platitudes,” Molly nearly spat back at her. He drew in a breath. “But I still like you regardless.”</p><p>Nott hadn’t looked up. “I feel like...when you’re ready to know your past, I would- I would- I would support that, and I would help you find it.”</p><p>It would, undoubtedly, have been a very sweet sentiment if it were not also the most terrifying thing Molly had ever heard.</p><p>“Maybe he killed goblins,” he said, slow and soft and merciless, glaring into Nott’s small, anxious face. “Maybe he was a goblin hunter. Maybe he ate them. Raw.”</p><p>It was the least of what he could’ve been. Molly didn’t know much about Shadycreek Run, but he knew enough about why Gustav usually swung the circus wide around it, risking weeks of traipsing through a haunted forest with nobody to play for but the beasts rather than venturing into the town.</p><p>It took a moment to realise that he couldn’t see Nott anymore because Caleb had stepped between them.  He was too caught up in his own head, still, and the spell wasn’t helping.</p><p>“Perhaps we have learnt all we need to learn from this conversation,” he said into the silence. “Maybe it is time to turn in.We have some things to do tomorrow. I am satisfied, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he added, and for the first time since they had met, deliberately caught Mollymauk’s eyes. “For now.”</p><p>Molly nodded, glancing away. He felt strange - hot and cold all over, nearly shaking as if he’d just gone two hours with his swords and a really tough opponent. He wanted to collapse into a bed somewhere and never crawl back out. One of those really luxurious ones at the Pillow Trove sounded just the ticket right now.</p><p>“This was not how I expected this to go,” he admitted, on one long exhale. He scrubbed a hand down and over his face, and looked back at the Nein, at Caleb. “Thank you.”</p><p>“For what it’s worth, I like you a little better now,” Beau chimed in.</p><p>“Me too,” Nott agreed, with a furtive sort of smile, rubbing at her nose.</p><p>Beau waved a hand. “You don’t have to reciprocate it.”</p><p>It was...it was easier to like her now. Now she’d looked at his past, what there was of it, and said he didn’t have to be beholden to it. Nott was...more complicated, but for either of them...Molly had had enough truth for one night.</p><p>He waited for the spell to fizzle out before replying, and felt Caleb’s eyes on him all the while. But if Caleb wanted to announce that Molly was, once again, being mostly sincere, he restrained himself, and for the next while, things were almost normal again. This new normal they’d established since leaving the circus, which meant that there was a job in front of them, something nasty and underground that they needed to kill - had Molly mentioned how little he liked that everything they got hired to kill was underground somehow? He’d do it, but these creatures needed to start finding better lairs. Above ground. Preferably well-ventilated.</p><p>They’d figured out what the things were, at any rate - will-o’-wisps, nothing that complicated - and broken up for the night. If it were any other night, Molly would’ve headed down to the bar for a very, <em> very </em>well-deserved drink, but he was still technically wanted for murder, and they were working tomorrow. He hated being the one who had to enforce that decision on himself - back at the carnival, Desmond would cut him off when he got like this, said he didn’t want Molly developing a habit and hungover barkers weren’t going to convince anyone to come and see the show.</p><p>His coat wasn’t holding his attention tonight, he’d jabbed his hand with the needle four times running, and he didn’t want to think of tonight every time he saw the finished design anyway.</p><p>Fjord didn’t even look around as he got up and went out into the hallway, and found Yasha awkwardly waiting by the window at the end of the hall, looking up and out to try and spot one star amidst the murk.</p><p>“Did you mean it?” he asked. “About staying for a while?”</p><p>A long, thoughtful pause. It didn’t do to rush Yasha about her disappearances. Molly wouldn’t have asked, but-</p><p>But he needed her right now, selfish as that was. If she went now- He’d cope, he always had before. But he’d much rather not have to cope alone.</p><p>“...I think so,” she said at last. “Are you…?”</p><p>Molly sighed heavily. “Let’s...let’s not talk about it right now. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s...I know where not to go now, so that’s...that’s something. Find any good flowers while you were away?”</p><p>Yasha’s cheeks went faintly pink, which was as good as a ‘yes’.</p><p>“These ones,” she said softly, reaching into her pack, and drawing out her flower-pressing book, flipping it open to a new page, a pressed handful of delicate little white blooms like a froth of lace. “There...there was a sort of mushroom like this that grew back home. They were Zuala’s favourite.”</p><p>“She’ll like that,” Molly said, still a little awkward, because what- what was he supposed to say, in the face of a grief like that? “Yash-”</p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>Molly rubbed his face again. “I...could you really not tell, back in the bar, whether I’d remembered or not?”</p><p>“No. I mean...yes. I mean...I couldn’t.” Yasha looked down at her boots. “You’re not normally that good a liar.”</p><p>Molly’s head snapped up. “Excuse you? I am an <em> excellent </em>bullshitter!”</p><p>“And a poor liar,” Yasha said evenly. “They aren’t always the same thing.”</p><p>Molly hunched his shoulders. He didn’t want to think about that. That the line could be that fine. That that other person might come back, and even Yasha wouldn’t be able to tell that Molly was gone.</p><p>“...Molly?” Yasha asked, and he felt her big, cool hand land on his shoulder.</p><p>He forced a smile. “Never mind. Must’ve been important,  if he wanted you twice running. I know you can’t tell me anything but...did he take you somewhere nice at least?”</p><p>“Um...not really.”</p><p>Molly butted his head, just gently, against her shoulder. “Tell me about it anyway? Or don’t. It’s your choice, really.”</p><p>He felt Yasha’s arm come around his shoulder, tentative the way she always was at first, gaining confidence as she tugged him closer to hug against her side.</p><p>He tucked his head into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, careful to avoid jabbing her with his horns, and listened to her talking about where the storm had taken her, the things that she had seen, the parts that she could share. He could feel her voice as much as hear it, this close. It helped. It made him feel that little bit more solid, more present in the world.</p><p>“Room with me?” he said into her shoulder, when she reached the end. “Just for tonight?”</p><p>“Won’t Caleb  mind?”</p><p>“I’m still in with Fjord.”</p><p>Yasha blinked. “Oh- I thought…” she cut off. “Won’t Fjord mind?”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “I don’t care if you don’t.”</p><p>He needed her nearby right now. Back at the carnival, he’d have crawled in with her after a day like this, except that there had been no days like this back at the carnival. He was going to have to invent a whole new vocabulary for days like this. She’d needed that too, sometimes. He was no substitute for Zuala and he didn’t care to be, but sometimes you just needed someone there.</p><p>He heard Yasha sigh against his hair.</p><p>“Are you okay?”<br/>“I’m...I’m going to be, I think.” Molly shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of other options.”</p><p>He’d be better once they got out of Zadash, whenever that was going to be. There was a lot of world out there! There was no real reason to come back here, other than their...whatever this arrangement was...with the Gentleman.</p><p>Yasha’s grip on him tightened a little.</p><p>“You...you can not be okay, if you want.”</p><p>Molly grimaced. “I don’t want. Let’s...let’s just get to bed. Sleepover time. You can try and braid my hair again, if you like. Don’t have any nail lacquer, though, and gossip’s pretty thin on the ground.”</p><p>Yasha gave a soft little laugh. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is another filler chapter, and another which hews quite closely to the canon, although with tweaks here and there. Next time, we get into more backstory, Molly POV is back, and the two intersect in ways which will hopefully lead us a bit more off-course.<br/>Also, sorry, I have been ill recently, so please attribute any drop in quality to that.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Gentleman’s price for clearing their names - well, Beauregard and Mollymauk’s names, specifically, but no doubt the rest of them would be dragged in one way or another - worked out to two days traipsing through a heavily-trapped complex of underground tunnels, fighting its undead master and stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down. None of which was anything Caleb objected to, exactly - at least, it was probably a good idea to be out of Zadash for a while, if there was a manhunt on. He wasn’t altogether sure it would be safe to go back to the Leaky Tap for another night running.</p><p>And he couldn’t say it wasn’t a help that they were too busy fighting for their lives most of the time they were down there for the bond to be more than an afterthought. It wasn’t all that much use as a means of communication between separate groups, except to tell him when Mollymauk was hurt and, he supposed, vice versa, which there hadn’t been much call for, and it hadn’t offered more than a few twinges since Mollymauk had realised Cree wasn’t going to be at the bar on their way to the tunnels after all. </p><p>She hadn’t been there when they got back, either. They’d dealt with the Gentleman alone, which had been...nerve-wracking, to say the least. Especially once Nott had decided to start lying, before Jester had backed her up. The Gentleman hadn’t said what he’d do if he caught them lying to him. He hadn’t needed to. He hadn’t caught them, though, and had promised to clear their names, even if it might take a few more days of lying low before Beau and Molly could show their faces in public again.</p><p>They’d dropped Ulog’s papers off with Dolan, in the hope that maybe he could or would do something with them, and that he felt responsible enough for his co-conspirator to help his wife adjust to being free again for the first time in...Caleb did not know how many years. His own institutionalisation felt...sometimes like the blink of an eye, sometimes like an eternity. Like he’d gone to sleep at seventeen and woken up at twenty-eight. He hadn’t recognised himself in the mirror, the first time he’d scraped together enough money to pay for a room at an inn. Did she have anyone on the outside left, he wondered? What had her name been...Illiana, he thought Ulog had said, but he couldn’t swear to it. He hoped she did. It was a hard thing, finding your way on your own after that, and Illiana, unlike him, had done nothing to deserve it.</p><p>The Leaky Tap had, by some miracle, kept their rooms for them, and it didn’t seem like Claudia had given their names to the crownsguard yet either. Of course, that wouldn’t do them terribly much good if Zadash’s town criers decided to unite into a vengeful mob and hunt them down, but so far, at least, it seemed like they’d be safe enough so long as they kept to their rooms and kept their heads down.</p><p>So, of course, the moment they got back to the Leaky Tap, Beauregard and Mollymauk decided to get high.</p><p>It felt...strange. Uncomfortable. Caleb had never taken skein - in Blumenthal he had been too focused on getting into the Academy one day, at the Academy it had been beyond his purse, under Trent’s tutelage he had been too single-minded, and after the asylum, the thought of being so unmoored in his own head had sickened more than excited him.</p><p>If this echo was anything like what it must feel like, he didn’t know how anyone could stand it. The world felt...heavy. Greyed at the edges. He could see little motes of...something...out of the corner of his eye, but it wasn’t there when he turned his head. His head felt...slow and thick, like trying to wade through molasses, and it was all he could do not to be sick. Why did <em> anyone </em>voluntarily subject themselves to this? It wasn’t like being drunk. Being drunk could be quite nice, if you could afford it, and if your mind wasn’t all it normally was, at least it felt like your own. This- This was torture.</p><p>Nott had to help him back to their room, in the end, he was shaking that badly. Yasha tried to help, but the moment her big hands had closed, very gently, on his shoulders, he’d been back in the asylum, being manhandled by one of the orderlies, and they’d all been lucky he was too tapped out from everything they’d done down in the tunnels or Yasha would’ve been charred to ash.</p><p>She’d been good about it, though, he thought muzzily, as he settled down to lie, half-curled, on his side, Nott alternately fussing over him and cursing the bond and Mollymauk and herself for ever finding the rings somewhere overhead, as distant as if he were hearing it through water. Mollymauk was...was halfway across town by now. He’d said something about finding a graveyard. Maybe he wanted to go for another nap. For some reason, that thought made him laugh breathlessly to himself through his nausea, until the force of it made him retch, unselfconscious as a child, off the edge of the bed.</p><p>“...right,” he heard Nott mutter overhead...or maybe he only dreamed that. It was all so very far away. “Okay. I’ll...I’ll get a bucket and...something to clean that up with. Nothing makes you sick again faster than smelling the first time. We can do this. Can't be worse than when Luc had the colic…”</p><p>“...<em> was </em>?” he managed.</p><p>Above him, Nott froze.</p><p>“...Caleb?” she asked after a long, silent moment. “You...you can hear me, can’t you?”</p><p>Caleb blinked up at her. “<em> Ja </em>.”</p><p>“Okay. Okay. Uh...stay here, and I’ll...I’ll...I’ll be right back. Just...sit tight.”</p><p>“<em> Du tust zu viel für mich… </em>”</p><p>“I don’t know what that means, but I hope part of it was ‘thank you’.”</p><p>“<em> Danke </em>,” Caleb said obediently.</p><p>He felt a sharp, bittersweet sort of pang at her going, and another, after she had gone, and he was alone.</p><p>Except, of course, he wasn’t. </p><p>Unbidden, his thumb stroked over the words etched into the ring. The script was Sylvan, and an archaic form that he wasn’t as familiar with, but it hadn’t taken long to figure out the words. <em> Parted from me and never parted. Never and always touching and touched. </em>The words belonged to no faith and no culture Caleb had ever encountered, though his knowledge of the Feywild and its people was limited. Perhaps they had been the rings’ first owners’ own choice, of significance only to them. Probably it had been meant to be reassuring - a lifeline, not a shackle.</p><p>Mollymauk had used it that way, at the Evening Nip. He had been in trouble, and Caleb...Caleb still couldn’t account for why he had gone along with it, then. He knew why he had tried to argue against the Zone of Truth - that had been pure self-preservation speaking. If Jester could do that to Molly, who was to say Caleb wouldn’t be next, when someone got curious? He could not afford that, and so intervening had been only sensible, more for himself than for Mollymauk, despite Molly quietly pulling him aside to thank him for that, the following morning. He hadn’t deserved it, and had told Molly so, but Mollymauk...Mollymauk had a way of insisting on these things. But that, at least, had been sensible. Lying to Cree had been...a gamble, and an unwise one, even if, having learnt more of the truth, Caleb could not regret it. He did not even know if Mollymauk would regard it as a favour to be repaid - he seemed the type to treat even seeming kindnesses lightly, his own or anyone else’s.</p><p>Mollymauk...Mollymauk was almost a mile away, and not in a graveyard. Caleb blinked. His head felt...clearer, now, and the ache in his chest was...was not his own, he didn’t think. How long had he been lying here?</p><p>Slowly, cautiously, he pushed himself up to sit on the bed.</p><p>“Caleb!”</p><p>Nott was across the room and in his lap before he was all the way upright.</p><p>“I’m fine, spatz,” he said, a little weakly. “I...it seems to have worn off. And if that was only the echo, I suspect Mollymauk will be sorry enough without your encouragement.”<br/>“He seemed pretty cheerful about it,” Nott muttered. “You...you are all right, aren’t you?”</p><p>Caleb smiled at her. “Nott. Just yesterday, you disarmed all those traps and got shot. Rather a lot. I should be asking you that.”</p><p>“That was yesterday. And I’m fine now, Jester fixed me up. You aren’t!”<br/>“I am. I am sorry for worrying you.” Caleb looked around. “Did everyone else go out to babysit Mollymauk and Beauregard?”</p><p>“Yeah. Jester offered to stay and maybe try that healing spell on you again, but I...I didn’t think you’d want her to see you in that kind of state, so-”</p><p>Caleb kissed the top of her head. “You were quite right. Thank you. I...do keep getting into trouble lately, don’t I?”</p><p>Nott stiffered. “<em> You </em> didn’t do this. Molly did. I can’t believe - you know I really was sort of starting to like him?”</p><p>“It is not his fault either.” Caleb shrugged. “Well, apart from having the poor judgement to kiss me in the first place, but as he was trying to help me at the time, I cannot fault that. This situation was of neither of our choosing, so it hardly seems fair to demand that he give up his...his pleasures when we did not even know, before this, if I would have the effect of that too.”</p><p>Nott scowled. “Why is it affecting you, anyway? Do you...does it work with...with ale, or...do you get his hangovers, or...?”</p><p>“Nein. No. I…” Caleb coughed. “I...suspect it has something to do with the nature of the drug. Skein is known for breaking the perceptual bounds between the planes, and that is always...difficult to predict.”</p><p>Nott scowled. “He could’ve asked,” she muttered.</p><p>“I don’t think he thought it would do anything to me.” <em> Or cared if it did </em>, a treacherous part of Caleb’s brain whispered.</p><p>No. That was...Mollymauk would, if anything, take this too much to heart. Just as he had with what happened in the sewers. Which would no doubt mean another entirely unnecessary attempted apology, and the awkwardness that would cause. Best to just side-step the whole thing.</p><p>“That doesn’t mean...you’re married. I mean...you’re not <em> married </em>married, but...you are sort-of Traveller-married, right? That...that doesn’t mean he can have it all his own way, you know? You- You are supposed to compromise on things like this. You...you do know that, right?”</p><p>Caleb paused. “Yes,” he said. “I know.”</p><p>His parents had been like that. They hadn’t argued much, at least not in front of him, though he’d heard a few soft-voiced rows late at night. Leofric Ermendrud had bent to Una as often as Una had bent to him. It had been the last advice his father ever gave him, during that last visit home, when he had seen the way Bren’s eyes had lingered on Astrid sometimes - to listen, and to never let a fight fester until you couldn’t find a way forward together. Bren had listened, and nodded, and not absorbed two words of it, but his mind would not allow him to forget.</p><p>“If anyone is to talk to him about it, it should be me,” he said, rather than bring up any of that, because Nott...Nott would see Mollymauk feeling he owed them one for the advantage that it was, and perhaps miss the liberty they would be taking by letting him believe it. “Please, Nott. Let me deal with this.”</p><p>Nott looked mutinous. “You <em> will </em>talk to him about this?”</p><p>Caleb paused. “...I will talk to him.”</p><p>He talked to Mollymauk, in fact, the next  morning at breakfast - eaten collectively in Yasha, Beau and Jester’s room, as while Beauregard could venture out largely unnoticed with a cloak to cover her clothes, Mollymauk was more-or-less confined to their rooms until the Gentleman had done his work. Zadash had several thousand dark-skinned youths, a fair proportion of whom must have had some degree of physical capability. If it had a hundred purple tieflings, Caleb would be surprised, and Mollymauk’s tattoos made it certain.</p><p>Well, ‘talked’ was possibly a generous way of putting it - ‘are you going to finish those eggs’ wasn’t exactly what Nott had had in mind - but Caleb had never promised to make actual conversation.</p><p>And then, of course, there was the dodecahedron. Caleb still didn’t have the first idea what the thing was, or what it was used for - if, in fact, it was <em> used </em>for anything - but it was still...still powerful, still remarkable, and something of the dream he’d had stayed with him. Had that truly been a dream? It felt...too clear, too sharp-edged in his mind. Dreams, in Caleb’s experience, were not usually so memorable. Even his usual nightmares had a confused and jumbled quality to them, the flames and the screaming all broken and fragmented...blurred. The dream he’d had hadn’t been like that, and if that were the case, if even one of those other Calebs had been real...then this was as close as he’d ever come to a chance to achieve his goals.</p><p>Of course, getting Jester to give him a look at the thing was another question entirely.</p><p>He’d meant to have a word with her that first night, but the skein had kicked in too early - <em> why </em>had Molly had to take it straight away? - and even if Caleb had been up and talking again inside an hour, the others had come back late that night - something about a bathhouse that he and Nott had both privately been quite relieved to miss, no matter how many pointed comments Jester made about just how much corpse ash Nott was still covered in. </p><p>He’d pulled Jester aside after breakfast the next morning, though.</p><p>“It has only been a short amount of time that I am <em> thinking </em>, and I will be very careful, with the bag.”</p><p>Jester wrinkled her nose. “Are you coming onto me? Because I’m <em> pretty </em> sure I’m not allowed to do that. I mean...not that the Traveller bothers much about ‘allowed’, but...you know. Molly. And I know you two aren’t <em> actually </em>together yet, but, you know...officiating clerics probably shouldn’t go around sleeping with either half of the couple, even if it was an accident, so…”</p><p>Caleb sighed. So he hadn’t been imagining that. He liked Jester. Jester was, of their travelling-companions...probably the one poked least, at least with any real intent. Or so he’d thought before that Zone of Truth spell, anyway.</p><p>“I was going to ask if I could hold the haversack and its contents for a day, so that I could better inspect and understand the thing that-”</p><p>Jester blinked. “Oh. Good. I mean, not good that you want to take my haversack, but good that you weren’t hitting on me. Wait- Why do you want my haversack? It’s pink! It’s mine! I paid for it!”</p><p>“I understand that, I don’t want to keep the haversack. I want to have it for a while, while you go off to do...whatever it is you are planning to do with the day. I do not know.”</p><p>Jester shrugged. “I mean...I didn’t have any specific plans. Maybe go to the Raven’s Den for a little bit, introduce them all to the Traveller…”</p><p>“Well, do you need your haversack for that?”</p><p>“Yes!” Jester gave a little stamp of the foot for emphasis. “And I can’t tell you what for. What if...we could hang out together?” she suggested, casting a sideways look at him. “I mean, if you want. Do you want to hang out with me? And then you can look in the bag with me? Not now, because I have to get to the Raven’s Den, but-”</p><p>“I was not thinking I would do it now,” Caleb agreed. “I...need to go to Pumat’s, Nott lent me some money for paper…”</p><p>“She gives you an allowance?” Jester asked innocently, violet eyes dancing with amusement.</p><p>Caleb blinked at her. “...no. It is a loan. I will repay her.”</p><p>He’d probably have to do that in kind, since Nott wouldn’t take money from him for some reason - he was about the only person she wouldn’t take it from - but he <em> would </em>pay Nott back for this.</p><p>“Oh.” Jester paused. “Are you taking anyone with you to Pumat’s, or…”</p><p>Caleb paused. “I...do not know. I suppose if anyone has business at Pumat’s, I will find out. But I would love to inspect our special package and try to understand it better, if you want to be present for that-”</p><p>“There’s a lot of people that inspect their <em> special packages </em> ,” Jester agreed, her voice nearly shaking with the effort it took not to laugh. “You get to know yourself <em> real </em>good, Caleb!”</p><p>It took another five minutes to convince Jester that, no, Caleb really wasn’t talking about masturbation, and he really did just want to look at the dodecahedron they’d stolen on the night of the raid on the High-Richter’s house.</p><p>“Are you sure you don’t want to invite Molly along?” she asked, with a  wide, mischievous grin. “You know, I think he would be really good at examining your special packages…”</p><p>At times like these, there was really nothing else for it.</p><p>“What are you talking about?” Caleb asked, blinking at her in feigned confusion. “I did not think- Mollymauk does not use this kind of magic, does he? I thought his abilities were inherent.”</p><p>“Maybe not <em> this </em>kind of magic, but…” Jester grinned even wider and waggled her eyebrows at him. Caleb tried to look politely blank.</p><p>Jester sighed.</p><p>“I am talking about <em> fucking </em>.”</p><p>Caleb coughed. “I...really don’t think that’s going to happen, Jester, but, if it did, that would be our business, would it not?”</p><p>“Right.” She paused, then added. “You know, it is really quiet in camp some nights. You can hear <em> everything </em>.”</p><p>Caleb’s ears were burning. “Ah...<em> ja </em>. I...will bear that in mind.”</p><p>Not that he expected he’d need to.</p><p>His face was burning - probably he was red now from neck to hairline, but there wasn’t a mirror to check, and, honestly, he didn’t want to look - as Jester nearly skipped out, apparently off to cause whatever havoc she intended at the Raven’s Den.</p><p>As it turned out, Caleb wasn’t the only one with things to do at Pumat’s. Yasha’s apparent sentimental attachment to her sword did not go so far that she wasn’t willing to trade it in for the Magician’s Judge, now she had it, and Nott agreed to meet them there after she had done...whatever it was she had wanted the morning to herself for. Caleb hadn’t asked, and Nott hadn’t told him.</p><p>It didn’t take long, at Pumat’s - honestly, waiting to meet Nott took up more time than his purchases or Yasha’s attempts to haggle over her old sword had done - and the afternoon was all eaten up with copying out the spells he’d found in Siff Duthar’s spellbook, those he could make use of. Caleb was so absorbed, he barely noticed evening creeping in until Jester knocked on the door.</p><p>He jolted back at the sound of the knock, suddenly realising that the reason why he’d had to lean in so closely that his nose nearly touched the paper was that it had grown dark outside, and the one candle Nott had lit to go through her button collection by wasn’t nearly enough light for proper transcription. He’d have to go through the last few spells again tomorrow, and make sure he’d copied them right. But first, Jester.</p><p>Touching the beacon for the second time was...somehow, Caleb had half-thought it would be less overwhelming, the second time.</p><p>It wasn’t.</p><p>He could feel Jester’s hand in his, but he couldn’t see her. All around him was darkness, the whirling stars, spheres and strange shapes drifting past him in the dark, on wisps of blue and purple clouds. And there he was again, at the threshold. He pressed ahead, his heart racing, the void racing past around him, so fast it ought to have whipped hair and coat out behind him, but all was perfectly still.</p><p>Before him hovered...something. It was grey, and pulsed like a beating heart, like the dodecahedron itself, and yet...it had answers for him, Caleb knew it had answers. A hundred questions bubbled up to his lips...but in the end, there was only one that mattered.</p><p>“Do you know if it’s achievable?”</p><p>The mote did not answer him. He tried again.</p><p>“Do you...can you tell me what you are? Or what you are for?”</p><p>Again, there was no reply, and his mind...it was hard to concentrate here. Hard not to let his mind get sucked out into that vast emptiness, the silence and peace of the void.</p><p>He looked down. His hand...it did not look quite like his own. One moment it was...as it had been for years now, the familiar broken nails and long fingers, grime worked into every line of his palm. The next second, it was a withered arthritic claw and, when he blinked again, quite smooth and unmarred by anything but the faintest calluses from holding a pen. Then, all at once, it was a child’s hand, then a young man’s, with ash on his fingertips and nails ground down almost to the quick with scrabbling.</p><p>“Father and Mother-” Caleb swallowed. His voice was his own and...not his own, all at once. Or it seemed like a hundred, a thousand Calebs spoke it with him, as if there was no form, no version of him anywhere that might have chosen a better path. “I hope I do not let you down.”</p><p>He reached out his hand, and the mote came to him. Became a part of him. It did not even hurt.</p><p>It was- That was what it was. Possibility. A chance to change something- Maybe not all he had hoped for, but this- This might yet be the first step, and it made him dizzy with relief to know that it was real, that there was some hope-</p><p>He could not feel Jester’s hand in his.</p><p>“-quick, make out with him, True love’s kiss is the only thing that will bring him back-”</p><p>“You heard her-”</p><p>“-forget it. He’s unconscious. You remember what happened the last time we tried that? I am not doing that again. Caleb? Come on. You’re here, wake up.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean <em> you </em> ! I wasn’t talking to <em> you </em>!”</p><p>“Why don’t we all just back away a bit. Give him some air. Caleb? You back with us yet?”</p><p>Caleb’s eyes were adjusting, slowly. He was back in the room with the others-</p><p>Far more of the others, in fact, than had been there at the start of the evening. The entire Mighty Nein were, for some reason, crowded into his and Nott’s room, and all but the three of them - him, Nott and Jester - looked as if they’d come armed for dragon.</p><p>“I...what happened?”</p><p>Beauregard made an irritated noise. “Yeah, that’s what I wanted to know. We were having a pretty nice night until this one,” she shoved Mollymauk lightly in the back, nearly knocking him into Caleb from where he’d been kneeling on the floor. “Insisted you were in some kind of trouble.”</p><p>Mollymauk actually looked a little abashed at that. Caleb hadn’t realised he was capable of the expression.</p><p>“Felt something,” he said, shrugging under the accusing eyes of everyone in the room except, apparently, Jester, who was wearing that same conspirator’s smile. “I didn’t know what it was, felt like...I do not have any idea what that felt like. But I figured...better to have us and not need us than need us when we’re all busy drinking downstairs.”</p><p>“<em> Danke </em>,” Caleb muttered awkwardly. “That is...quite unnecessary.”</p><p>Mollymauk shrugged. “So it turns out.”</p><p>“I’m guessing you were trying to find out more about what this beacon thing is?” Fjord said, looking the lot of them over. “Didja find anything?”</p><p>Caleb rubbed a hand over his face. “I...believe so, yes. Let me- Give me a moment. I...this thing is...well...it is beyond...anything that I have seen. I truly believe it might- might give us some ability to- to reshape possibility itself-”</p><p>“And, uh, what does that mean?” Beauregard prodded, narrowing her eyes at the dodecahedron, still pulsing gently in the centre of the room.</p><p>“It could- Well, it could-” Caleb marshalled his thoughts. “It is...only a fragment of possibility, I believe, but even that fragment would be enough to- to effect a great deal of change. If, for example, one of us is in danger of- of death, or a truly cataclysmic failure or...or, I suppose, just some everyday inconvenience if you really want to use an artefact this powerful in that way...using this fragment we could- we could try and...and change that, affect...probability or possibility itself...in order to turn things in our favour.”</p><p>“So...this thing can change our luck?” Fjord asked, after a moment. “All our luck?”<br/>“I…” Caleb swallowed. “I...don’t think it will work that often. Maybe once a day? And only...only for one of us at a time, but...broadly, yes.”<br/>“Why were you talking about your mom and you dad, though?” Jester butted in, slapping at the floor idly with both hands.</p><p>Caleb...hadn’t realised she’d heard that part. Already, something of the vision was fading in his memory. The room was dead silent.</p><p>“Was that a weird question? Should I have not asked that?”</p><p>Nott shifted. “It was on my mind,” she admitted. “But I wasn’t going to bring it up.”</p><p>“Well, I- What did I say? Did- Did you all hear it?”</p><p>If any of them had to hear it, it might as well be Nott, but Jester...a few days ago, he would have said Jester was fine too, but...if she got curious again...Caleb had a reasonable record for resisting these things, but he didn’t want to chance it with Zone of Truth.</p><p>“Think we missed that bit,” Mollymauk said, a bit too brightly, though he still sounded oddly shaken. He was telling the truth, Caleb knew.</p><p>He nodded, not wanting to meet any of their eyes. “I...I do not know. If I did say anything, I don’t remember it. Can we…” he cleared his throat. “It is...very crowded in here.”</p><p>Mollymauk seemed to catch his meaning first, but that was just the bond.</p><p>“Okay, people. Show’s over. We’ve got a shiny new magic artefact out of it, and this time we even know what it does. What say we all head back to our drinks?”</p><p>Beauregard shrugged. “Not like we wanted the front-row seat to Caleb’s parent issues anyway.”</p><p>Fjord was frowning. “And this dodecahedron thing - that’s all it does?”</p><p>“It is...the thing I know it does,” Caleb admitted. “There...there may be more. It is...it is very powerful. But I do not know.”</p><p>Fjord nodded. “Okay. You coming, Jester?”</p><p>“No-o-o-o…” Jester said slowing, drawing the word out so long it sounded actually painful. “I’m fine here. Thank you, Oskar.”<br/>Caleb couldn’t quite suppress a snort at that.</p><p>It wasn’t until the whole group had filed out, Mollymauk last of all, casting one last look back over his shoulder before the door shut behind him, that Caleb looked back to Jester.</p><p>“What did I say?”</p><p>Jester looked faintly bewildered. “You said, ‘Mom and Dad, I hope I make you proud’.”</p><p>“Or don’t disappoint you,” Nott chipped in.</p><p>“It really wasn’t all that embarrassing, if that’s what you were worried about,” Jester added quickly. “And also ‘gee whiz, I should probably take baths more often’, you said that too-”</p><p>“That’s not- Not that part-”</p><p>“Well, you were going to say that, and then the grey thing went into you,” Jester insisted. </p><p>“You said, ‘oh, I wish I could share my problems with my friends’,” Nott added, which sounded as much like him as the thing about the baths. Less, in fact. Bren had liked to be clean, once.</p><p>Caleb scowled. “It seems like I can hardly avoid it,” he muttered, glancing at the door that had closed behind Mollymauk. He hadn’t wanted to let the others know what they were doing with the dodecahedron yet. He wouldn’t have told Jester, if she hadn’t been the one carrying it, and if she hadn’t insisted on being here.</p><p>Jester followed his gaze. A cloud seemed to come over her face. “You...it wasn’t actually dangerous, was it? I mean, not ‘charge in with swords’ dangerous or anything?”</p><p>Caleb shook his head. “Not...not that kind of dangerous, no. Though...I do think...this thing is very powerful. So, of course it is dangerous, all powerful things are.”</p><p>“Like me,” Jester said, nodding wisely.</p><p>Caleb paused. “...yes, very like you. Only...less colourful, and without the taste for pastries.”<br/>“So, boring me.” Jester nodded. “Okay. That’s...interesting. Only it seemed like everyone was pretty worried.”</p><p>“And, you know, not all of us...not all of us get that...that <em> connection </em>thing you two’ve got going,” Nott added. “So we don’t know when you’re in trouble if you don’t tell us.”</p><p>“If you ever want to talk about it, you can just come to us!” Jester agreed, slinging an arm around Nott’s shoulders and pulling her against her side to put their heads together, both beaming unnaturally wide, false smiles.</p><p>Caleb nodded, and mustered a very faint answering smile of his own. “Good to know.”</p><p>“We’re super good at talking, both of us,” Jester said encouragingly. </p><p>Caleb’s smile widened, just a little. He couldn’t help it. “That is true,” he admitted in a low voice. “For both of you.”</p><p>Jester knotted her hands together and leaned forwards until she was almost bent double.</p><p>“Tomorrow I want the thingy, okay?”<br/>Caleb blinked, “The thing- You want to-”</p><p>“The dodeca-” Nott started.</p><p>“Well, you are in possession of it, for the most part. I said I just wanted to have a look at it.”</p><p>Jester’s smile turned sly. “You’re right, I am.”</p><p>“We can take turns with it, ja? We will decide. Or- All of us will, since there’s no chance now of keeping this a secret.”</p><p>“Did we want to keep it secret?” Jester asked, frowning. “I mean...it’s pretty great. We could all use it. It would mean we all got fewer turns, but…”</p><p>Caleb slid the lid back onto the lead box, just in case.</p><p>“I...had not planned to tell the others, no,” he admitted, very cautiously. “But it seems we do not need to worry about keeping it secret now. At least, not from the rest of the Nein.”</p><p>“Oh my gods!” Jester was sitting bolt upright now. “What if, now the grey thing is in you, the wizards in town will be able to sense you?”<br/>Panic, white-hot and searing, went through Caleb like a bolt from a crossbow for a moment before reason reasserted itself. No. He had his amulet, he still had his amulet, he ought to be safe from that- But Molly was able to get past that, wasn’t he? He’d got past the amulet, which...if it had shown Caleb nothing else, it was that there were things in heaven and earth not dreamt of by his philosophy. It was possible. He felt, suddenly, a burst of distant, answering alarm - Mollymauk’s, he thought, not his - and breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. The last thing they needed now was Mollymauk bursting in again.</p><p>“What- Why would that- No!”</p><p>“It...I would not rule it out,” Caleb said shakily. “Before...all of this...I would say that is not how this works, but…” he gathered himself. “I do not <em> think </em>that that will work. Anyone looking for this thing will be looking for this.” He tapped the lid of the box. “The physical object. Whatever went into me...I am not even sure it exists on this plane, and if anyone is looking for it, I...I did not want to reveal this before, but I am...quite well protected against most forms of scrying.”</p><p>Jester blinked. “...but Molly can still find you?”</p><p>“Ja. It is...a function of the rings, I think. And...it is not like ordinary scrying. He cannot spy on me from a distance or anything like that. And that is…” Caleb drew in a breath. It wasn’t fine. It was terrifying. It was just another reason to end this as soon as possible, if they ever found a way. “It is...not the same.” He cleared his throat. “But I think this is a very...potent...thing, and we can use it to do a lot of good. You know, not in the heat of the moment to try to hit, you know, a gnoll in the face with something, but when we are really trying to figure something out or...or do the unachievable-”</p><p>“Or, like, really want to put a <em> moustache </em> on a <em> fucking statue </em>!” Jester broke in vehemently.</p><p>Nott gave a little nod. “You need extra luck for that.”</p><p>“...that’s a...good hypothetical,” Caleb managed. </p><p>Jester spread her arms in a careless sort of half-shrugging gesture. “Yeah, just in case you ever wanted to do that.”</p><p>“Can I just say, real quick, before we adjourn,” Nott said, raising a small, clawed hand. “There was something that you were reluctant to do because of your own personal fears, and you entrusted Jester to and you entrusted Jester to inspire you to do something that was...uhm...possibly uncomfortable for you, and it worked out great! I think that moving forward if you want to just go for it! As long as you have trusted friends with you, then that would be a good option to do.”</p><p>Caleb shifted. “That was a lot of advice,” he said awkwardly. “I mean, it is no secret that I like these people, so we are in good company. This is working out. You are- You know, you are capable- and, er….oh dear. I’m going to go to bed now.”</p><p>He was halfway out into the corridor, only half hearing Jester’s delighted cry of: “Your son is so cute!” behind him, which made no sense at all, before he remembered.</p><p>“Oh, this is my room! You have to go to your room!”</p><p>It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, Caleb’s proudest moment.</p><p>The next morning, Caleb woke up to the sound of the street crier declaring that the murderers of the High-Richter had been brought to justice, and almost panicked before remembering the Gentleman’s promise. It seemed he’d been as good as his word. Caleb hadn’t quite expected that.</p><p>But yet, over the next few days, the presence of both crownsguard and Righteous Brand at the city gates dropped back to something almost approaching normal levels, and the caravans that had been backed up for miles at the city gates started flooding in, banners and ribbons and autumn foliage being strung up between the arches and lantern-poles. <em> Herbstfest </em> , they had called Harvest Close back home. <em> Oktoberfest </em> , some of the older men and women around Blumenthal still called it, though the name had been dying out even when Caleb was a child, and he had never learnt where that name had come from. Even in the Innerstead Sprawl, Zadash’s festivities were grander and less homely than Blumenthal’s had ever been - or, at the very least, there was far less actual produce on display than Caleb could remember from any <em> Herbstfest </em>back home. He wasn’t sure whether it was a comfort or not, to have that extra bit of distance.</p><p>He could already hear music playing outside when he woke up on the morning of the festival - just tuning up, so far as he could make out, but clearly the people of Zadash weren’t wasting any time in finding an excuse to celebrate after the attack on the Tri-Spires. And nor, it seemed, were the Mighty Nein. It was hard not to get swept up in it, the carnival atmosphere that had come over the whole city, the wild exhilaration of finally, finally being able to celebrate after days of uncertainty and fear.</p><p>Or maybe that was just Mollymauk, whose excitement was like being caught up and nearly drowned in a great wave of sparkling wine, frothy and heady and impossible to resist. He would have said it felt almost like being high, except that he had experienced, now, what a second-hand high was like, and this wasn’t anything like one.</p><p>Somehow, everything felt that little bit <em> brighter </em>. Caleb liked a fair as much as the next person - well, all right, perhaps not if the next person was Mollymauk - but he hadn’t been this eager to try out a fairground game since he’d been a child himself. There were shell games to win, and subsequently lose, Fjord had already suffered three ridiculously humiliating defeats over at the game called Trebuchet, every one of which sent a prickling thrill of amusement that wasn’t Caleb’s through him, caramel apples to try. A sad shortage of book stalls, but he supposed you couldn’t have everything.</p><p>“Caleb!” It was Mollymauk, Caleb knew that before he even heard the words. He was half-expecting to be tackled from behind, already bracing for it, but Mollymauk was already skidding to a halt as Caleb turned, about a foot away from him. “Have you run Detect Magic on any of this?”</p><p>“Ah…” Caleb swallowed. “Well, you know, I tried to do a little...er...stuff on the sly and it didn’t work out so well…”</p><p>Mollymauk let out a dejected sort of sigh. “Just- Just, there’s so much, I figure something’s got to be interesting.”</p><p>Caleb considered that. “Well, er, if you can keep eyes off of me for a moment, I can do that if you like.”</p><p>A wide, bright, startling grin spread across Mollymauk’s face. “I can <em> absolutely </em>do that.”</p><p>He was already dashing off towards the tapestries before Caleb had had a chance to blink the afterimage of that smile out of his eyes and prepare the spell to cast.</p><p>There were, in fact, a few small magical items being sold - just little things. Luck charms and petty chicanery, amulets with a minor illusion to augment the wearer’s appearance - fewer of them than Caleb might’ve expected at a similar street fair in Rexxentrum, but Zadash had a branch of the Academy too, albeit a smaller one, in the Halls of Erudition.</p><p>He trailed after Molly, keeping a safe distance, venturing just close enough to hear:</p><p>“Bless you, master craftsmen! My god. It is such a rendition of the Platinum Dragon that I've never seen before! It’s beautiful.”</p><p>“We're happy to bring joy to you and the house of your great deity,” the half-elf running the store replied, apparently a bit taken aback by Mollymauk’s enthusiasm. Caleb couldn’t blame him. He was a bit taken aback by it himself.</p><p>Mollymauk slung the rolled-up tapestry over his shoulder like a carpet and headed over towards Caleb, beaming from ear to ear. It seemed for a moment like he was going to throw an arm around Caleb’s shoulders, but he checked himself just before he got close enough.<br/>“So, you see anything?”</p><p>“Ja. Nothing...nothing special, you know, but that stall there, and the one next to it both seem to be dealing in minor magical items, trinkets and such, if you have an interest.”<br/>“I <em> definitely </em>have!” Molly was nearly bouncing in place now. </p><p>Caleb swallowed. He felt...light. Uncomfortably so. It wasn’t <em> right </em> . It wasn’t- He had no <em> right </em>to this-</p><p>Even that thought made something twist resentfully at the other end of the bond, a bitter note in all that brightness, and he watched Mollymauk’s blinding smile dim a little. It helped. A bit of bitterness was what Caleb needed right now. He had come all too close to letting himself enjoy it.</p><p>Mollymauk was watching him now. Caleb couldn’t see it, but he could feel the pressure of Mollymauk’s eyes on him.</p><p>“Don’t you ever get tired of being miserable?”</p><p>Caleb hunched his shoulders. “It is...not always for me to decide. We cannot all <em> choose </em>to be happy.”</p><p>There was a long, still beat between them.</p><p>“I know that,” Molly said after a moment, pure frustration in his voice. “But not everything needs to be a stick to beat yourself with. So, you were having a nice time. Are you under some sort of curse that the world will end if Caleb Widogast lets himself enjoy something that isn’t a book for one night?”</p><p>Caleb raised his eyebrows. “What are you going to do if I say ‘yes’?”</p><p>“Finding out if we can break it seems like a pretty good start! Wait, are you?”</p><p>“...no.” Caleb stepped away. “I am going to go find Nott.”</p><p>He found her over by a set-up for an archery competition, and the best thing about having a partner-in-crime was that they didn’t have to ever say the words ‘we are going to hustle the hell out of this’ for both of them to understand that that was the goal here. Fortunately for all concerned, Caleb did not have to <em> pretend </em>to have no idea what he was doing with a shortbow.</p><p>Nott had won more-or-less everything there was to win by the time the rest of the Nein caught up to them, Fjord still nursing a nasty bruise on his forehead from where Yasha and Jester had thrown him. It was easy enough to let the group lead them off towards a platform set up, apparently for arm-wrestling, and easy enough to slip away into an alley and cast Disguise Self on his clothing.</p><p>It wasn’t especially hard to find a couple of the Cobalt Soul - the blue robes were rather distinctive, even in a crowd like this, and they weren’t making any effort to blend in.</p><p>“Excuse me!” he called out, hurrying towards them. “I'm sorry. May I trouble you for a moment? I know this is untoward in the middle of a festival.”</p><p>The two monks turned, as one, to face him. The one in the more ornate robes - probably the superior of the two - was an elven woman with long silvery-fair hair and a weathered face, and clearly getting up in years even by the long, long scale on which the elves measured lives.</p><p>“Of course. What can we help you with?”</p><p>Caleb’s brain stalled. He hadn’t quite expected it to be this easy to convince them. He swallowed. “Oh- ah- yeah, I, ah- Again, I am very sorry. Um. I am a travelling writer. I am writing a- a history of the great cities of the Empire and I have heard wonderful things about, erm, the library that is under your stead, and I don’t know - I have viewed it from the outside, it is a beautiful structure, but, um, I don’t know what it entails to visit it and I was wondering, ah, do you allow? I don’t know if- if- if it costs a fee, or if you need some sort of letter of recommendation, but I- I am very eager to learn about, um, the library itself and the city and everything that I can learn about it so that I can write a more extensive- It would just mean so much to me.”</p><p>The two monks glanced at each other.</p><p>“Ah- Um- Well, of- of course. You are- it is open to the public. You’re just, ah, required to come when there is a- an available monk to escort you through the premises. Of course, you cannot take anything from the archive itself, but but you’re welcome to read while in the presence of one of our various monks and/or worshippers of the Knowing Mistress.”</p><p>Caleb was nearly salivating...at least, in the figurative sense. “The entire library?”</p><p>The elven monk paused. “Well, the public portions of it, yes.”</p><p>“Oh- Of course.”</p><p>She nodded. “But, yes. Just need to come on a day on which the archive is open and available, sign in and you will be assigned one of our various attendees of the archive and you will have the run of the public library in which to read and make notes of. You may take your own copy of notes, but once, of course, it is only within the public space.”</p><p>“It’s far simpler than I had imagined,” Caleb admitted, almost breathless now with how <em> close </em>it was. Of course, there was no guarantee that what he was looking for would be in the public library - that knowledge was dangerous, and he was not even sure the Cobalt Soul would have it at all - but it was, at least, a place to start.</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you asked.” She smiled, politely, and seemed about to move on.</p><p>“Thank you so much. I- Ah- Forgive me, this is forward. What- what is your name?”<br/>She seemed a little taken aback by the question. “I’m Jennah, Archivist Jennah.”</p><p>“It is a pleasure.” He glanced away. “Um, this is a different subject almost entirely, but I- I was wondering, um...I mean to make a stop at all the great libraries of this city. Um...I was wondering, um, is it a similar situation at the Hall of Erudition?”<br/>He almost didn’t dare to hope that far - certainly the Academy itself had not been so open - but he had to ask.</p><p>Archivist Jennah paused. “They are...a little different. They maintain their knowledge for those who are actually there as part of the curriculum. You’ll have to speak to the headmaster as well. They have, from what we know, as we are not allowed either, quite a decent cache of arcane knowledge as well. There has been some sharing, but they are...particular.”</p><p>It was...closer to what Caleb had expected - the Academy in Rexxentrum too had guarded its secrets jealously, and Caleb had hardly heard of any outsider being allowed in to the library there. At the time, that thought had thrilled him, that he had access to all that knowledge where others did not. Now, it was just another obstacle.</p><p>“What was the headmaster’s name?”</p><p>“Ah- Um. That would be Ornit, I believe.” Archivist Jennah’s brows knit together for a moment. “No- That is- No, it would be Oremid Hass.”</p><p>The bottom dropped out of Caleb’s stomach.</p><p>“Oremid Hass,” he repeated.</p><p>“Yes.”<br/>“So- Oremid Hass is running the Hall of Erudition.”<br/>“Yes.”<br/>“...okay.”</p><p>This was- </p><p>This was bad. Caleb barely heard his own voice as he asked about the attack on the Zauber Spire, his mind already whirring.</p><p>Oremid Hass...he knew the name. Archmage of Cultivation, his title was. Caleb had never met the man, but he had been a crony of Trent’s. Not a well-liked or well-respected one, he had heard Trent speak slightingly of Hass before...but close enough still that if Hass truly was the one running the Hall of Erudition, Caleb wasn’t going anywhere near the place.</p><p>That left the archives of the Cobalt Soul as his only recourse, and what he was looking for would not necessarily be in the public portions. Which meant he would have to ask Beau for a favour.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another rushed chapter, so hopefully no-one minds, but I wrote this one in a blaze in two days, and still haven't covered half of what I hoped to. Hopefully it's all right - and I'm sorry that this chapter and next have a bit less of the platonic relationships than usual.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>On a scale of one to ten, this got full marks for being the single biggest party Molly had ever attended. He’d had a few drinks, bought a delightfully gaudy tapestry he didn’t know what he was going to do with, seen Fjord land on his face in the dirt playing Trebuchet and won both eternal gloating rights and a strawberry in the process.  If not for the pesky little matter of the Empire declaring war on Xhorhas tomorrow, it would’ve been a straight-up great night all ‘round, but unfortunately...war. With Xhorhas. </p><p>On the one hand, excellent excuse for getting out of Zadash before anyone could come recruiting who wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer without leaving a forwarding address for the Gentleman or any of his troupe. On the other hand...war. With Xhorhas. Molly hadn’t been around for long, but he’d gotten the distinct impression already that that was the sort of thing that might be very difficult to run away from. Not that he wasn’t willing to try. Monsters, fine. Adventure, fine. Risk of imminent death, well, that was only to be expected. Orders, uniforms and no idea what he was even fighting for...not at all Molly’s area, so he was going to leave this to people who actually had something at stake here.</p><p>Thankfully, the rest of the Nein seemed to be with him on that. They were going to win this tournament, and then they were getting as far away from Zadash as they could get before they got an offer from the Crown that they wouldn’t be allowed to refuse.</p><p>The first sign of a flaw in that plan came during the announcements.</p><p>For some reason, here in Zadash, they chose to begin their melee tournament by announcing all of the various local bigwigs in the crowd, starting with the Lawmaster and working sideways from there. Molly was pretty sure that was Dolan, up there in the Lawmaster’s box, so either he’d been named the new High-Richter already or had just been invited to tag along by Orentha. He felt uneasy for a moment, almost sick at the thought of all those eyes on him...he frowned. No. That wasn’t him. He glanced along the line of them, to see Caleb drawing the hood of his dull brown cloak up and over his face, huddling into it as if it might make him invisible instead of just drab.</p><p>“Stage fright?” Molly asked, raising his eyebrows.</p><p>Caleb hunched deeper into his cloak. “Nein.”</p><p>“If it helps, we’re going to have a lot of things trying to kill us in a minute or two,” Molly offered. “That ought to take your mind off it.”</p><p>“Well, <em> that’s </em>comforting,” Nott muttered, shooting a dirty look in Molly’s direction.</p><p>Fjord shrugged. “He’s got a point, though. Hard to worry about people watching you when there’s something huge and hairy with too many legs trying to eat your face off.”</p><p>“I do not suffer from stage fright.”</p><p>It sounded like an obvious lie. It wasn’t one, but that was what it sounded like. But then what was Caleb afraid of? Because, clearly, there was something.</p><p>Molly wasn’t in the business of speculating where his companions had come from. Whatever it was, it had brought them to Trostenwald, and to the Nein, and he didn’t need to know the rest of it. But whatever it was that Caleb was afraid of, it was making the hairs stand up on Molly’s neck too, the place between his shoulder-blades prickling in anticipation of a knife in the back. Not just the usual anxiety, but something deeper, more focused.</p><p>Not his business, Molly reminded himself. Not that Caleb had entirely restrained from prying into Molly’s past - or rather, Lucien’s - but it was the principle of the thing. No rooting around in your companions’ baggage uninvited, whether that was literal or figurative. It had been what made things work with the circus, they could probably use a bit more of that in the Nein.</p><p>Of course, all of that slipped his mind about as soon as it was their turn in the ring. Three rounds, and the Nein meant to win every last one of them. Easier said than done, it was true - Beau and Yasha were poisoned by an otyugh in the first round, they all got a bit of a mauling from the winter wolves in the second, and Molly got himself knocked out early into the third round when the hill giant they’d been put up against finally got tired of him slicing bits off it. They still won, though, thank all the gods for Caleb and his sleep spell, and to the victors - both teams of them, but why quibble over the semantics - went the spoils.</p><p>The afterparty, it had to be said, did not live up to the festival outside. When they’d been promised free alcohol, Molly had to admit he’d been anticipating something a bit livelier. But, no. Richly-furnished room full of...honestly, it looked like mostly politicians. Rich people, anyway. Dolan was there, at least, so that was one person they knew, but otherwise it was just a sea of richly-dressed people sipping wine and making conversation in low voices, and not nearly as much to catch the eye as had been on offer at the festival outside.</p><p>Honestly, it was kind of disappointing. Molly had privately been hoping that the parties of the rich and powerful would have <em> better </em>entertainment, or else what was the point in accumulating wealth and power in the first place?</p><p>He was just considering following the example of the Stubborn Stock and making for the buffet when the Starosta came over. This was, in Molly’s experience, never a particularly good sign, but tonight seemed to be breaking that streak - it was almost an epidemic now. Molly had never known so many government officials look pleased to see him as he had since the Nein had come to Zadash. It almost made him feel sorry that they would be leaving quick, fast and in a hurry at their first possible convenience. Almost. </p><p>“Congratulations!” the Starosta said brightly, spreading his arms wide in welcome. “I just had to come and tell you personally - a fantastic display. Come closer, please, I want to meet all of you!”</p><p>He reached out his hands towards all of them, Yasha first. This...was probably not his brightest-ever idea.</p><p>“What’s your name?”</p><p>Yasha looked as if she would rather be facing another round with the hill giant. She cast a desperate look over at Molly, but reached out awkwardly to take the Starosta’s hand, nearly enveloping it entirely in hers.</p><p>“Hello. I am Yasha.”</p><p>“Yasha. Pleasure to meet you. Fantastic performance. You're a mighty warrior. I'm really impressed.”</p><p>Yasha looked down, having apparently developed a burning fascination with her boots. With good reason, they were excellent boots, but some people <em> really </em>needed to get a sense for when someone didn’t want to be talking to them, because Yasha was positively radiating her discomfort. “Thank you very much.”</p><p>“Oh. You are?” the Starosta added, turning to Molly.</p><p>“Molly,” Molly said, taking the offered hand. “Charmed.”</p><p>“Molly Charmed. Good, pleasure to meet you.”</p><p>“That’ll do.”<br/>He still wasn’t sure this wasn’t the lead-in to a recruitment speech, but manners never hurt anyone.</p><p>It did feel like the lead-in to a recruitment speech, the Starosta going ‘round the whole circle of them, buttering them up about how good a job they’d done out there in the Victory Pit, the skill and the showmanship they’d brought to the table. As a professional butterer-up, Molly had to give him credit for how thickly he was laying it on. Really, it was almost a pity when Fjord interrupted him mid-flow to ask:</p><p>“Have tensions eased in the city a bit since, you know, the incident?”</p><p>To his credit, the Starosta didn’t let a flicker show on his face. Hell of a poker face, this one. Probably it was a necessity, politics being such a proverbial viper’s nest that even Molly had heard of it.</p><p>“The incident?”</p><p>Fjord blinked. “Well, in the tower with the- yeah…” he made a vague sort of gesture at something very tall falling over. </p><p>“Oh, right. Ah, well, we’ve- we’ve taken care of that for the time being. Repairs have been made, the tower’s back where it was. Um...the individuals you probably want to talk to about that are over there in the corner.”</p><p>He pointed.</p><p>And dread crawled up Molly’s spine, pulling him down so that for a moment he could hardly catch a full breath.</p><p>There was nothing, on the surface, about the two men in white robes drinking glasses of wine by the window with their backs turned to the rest of the room at all. Just a pair of old mystics talking shop.</p><p>He cast a look over at Caleb - because what other explanation, really, could there be - only to find him with that same wiped-blank expression from the sewers, his fingers plucking spasmodically at the hood of his brown cloak, as if he hadn’t quite decided yet whether putting it up in this crowd would draw more or less attention.</p><p>The conversation had already moved on to the spider they’d killed in the sewers - apparently the Starosta was trying to get his recruitment pitch back on track, but Molly could barely hear it over the rush of blood in his ears, the feeling of the world unsteady beneath his feet. He gritted his teeth behind his polite half-smile, and dug his nails into the meat of his palm to try and shock himself into remembering. It helped, a little. This feeling, at least, was entirely his own, since apparently whoever had made the damn rings hadn’t been <em> quite </em>fool enough to make ‘feeling each other’s physical pain’ a stipulation. Gods knew they’d thrown in what felt like every other feature they could think of.</p><p>“All right. Well, good to know,” the Starosta was saying now, and Molly blinked. Okay, what had he missed. “Should we have need of you, we'll know where to come and find you.”</p><p>...ah. That was what he’d missed. Getting out of town had just slid up the priority list.</p><p>Which, sadly, meant they probably weren’t going to get much use out of that unlimited access to the Tri-Spires, but Molly would take being a free agent without access to the Pillow Trove over having access and not being able to afford it as a conscripted soldier in an army he had no interest in, in an empire he wasn’t even sure he was technically a citizen of and wouldn’t want to fight for even if he were.</p><p>“He certainly seems stressed,” Fjord observed, as the Starosta finally turned away, recruitment speech delivered and favours done.</p><p>“He’s going to die tomorrow in war.”</p><p>Fjord’s head snapped around to stare at Nott. “What?”</p><p>“We all are.”</p><p>“What are you talking about?”</p><p>Nott was nearly shaking with nerves now, her flask already in hand. “Didn’t I- Didn’t I tell you guys? There’s a war starting tomorrow?”</p><p>Fjord’s brows knit together. “Did you?”</p><p>“I overheard them. Yes!”</p><p>“She did tell us,” Jester put in. </p><p>“Oh.”<br/>“We’re all going to- We’re all going to die. We should leave now.”</p><p>Jester was already shaking her head. “We’re not going to die! The war is very far away from us still.”</p><p>“I...can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Nott here,” Molly cut in, “I think we should get out of town while it’s still possible.”</p><p>Fjord’s frown deepened a little. “Really? We’re just starting to climb our way up through this thing.”</p><p>“That’s-” Molly broke off. “You leave the table when you’ve got the pot. You don’t- You don’t wait for everything to go back to the dealer. We’ve made a decent-size fortune here, just tonight, there are people here we’d rather not run into again, let’s get out while we’re still ahead.”</p><p>“This about Cree?” Beau asked, narrowing her eyes at him.</p><p>Molly paused. “It is...a bit about Cree. Not just about Cree, but a bit. Also about that guy we were just talking to, who could not have more obviously been trying to get us to sign up to fight this war for them. I don’t want to do that. Any of you changed your minds about that since last time we got that offer?”</p><p>Caleb cleared his throat. “I think for a day or two, everyone here is going to be very preoccupied in the city. So, if there is anything you are thinking of doing, it would be a good time to do it.”</p><p>Jester’s grin was so wide it was almost frightening, and made Molly seriously wonder how that expression was physically possible. “So we should steal everything!” she hissed.</p><p>“And at some point they’re going to start looking around for people to fight this war,” Molly retorted, “And I’m not sure I want to be around for it, because <em> boy </em>they know who we are now. I don’t think they’ll take ‘thanks, but no thanks’ for an answer, do you?”</p><p>He felt, through the bond, another awful twist of old pain, slow and sharp, like unwrapping a wound that had gone gangrenous. Caleb’s face didn’t show a flicker of it.</p><p>“Nein,” he said, in a low, harsh voice. “The Empire is...not known for accepting ‘no’ as an answer from those it requires to serve. What I am suggesting is a compromise. Not leaving immediately, but soon.”</p><p>“I need time to go back to the Pillow Trove, you guys,” Jester jumped in.</p><p>Fjord, however, had already lost interest. “Anyone else pick up on those two individuals over in the corner?”</p><p>Another slow pulse of dread through the bond. This time, Molly was half-expecting it. It was easier to hold it at a distance, as something not his own. </p><p>Jester craned her neck to look. “Well, he pointed them out, we should go talk to them.”</p><p>“They look familiar,” Beau muttered.</p><p>A grin split Jester’s face. “What should we say?”</p><p>“Oh, boy.”</p><p>Molly could agree with Fjord that far. He was about to suggest maybe go with someone a bit less obvious to do the talking - Beau would work, she was human,  and the Gentleman had already proven how hard it was to describe her in a way that made it clear they were looking for <em> this </em>human monk with a bad attitude and a bo staff and not someone else. Then he stopped.</p><p>Caleb was already disappearing into the crowd. Molly hadn’t even seen him go.</p><p>There was no real reason to go after him. Caleb was a grown man, he could handle himself, and Molly had already embarrassed them both pretty thoroughly by leading most of the Nein charging in with swords drawn only to find him peacefully communing with the dodecahedron...beacon...thing that they’d found in the sewer and subsequently stolen from the Crownsguard. If Caleb wanted anyone’s help, it would be Nott’s, and she was still with them all. Not as if Molly wasn’t interested in the two wizards in the corner anyway…</p><p>He caught Yasha’s shoulder and leaned over to speak into her ear. “I’m...going to head out for a bit, get some air.”</p><p>Yasha nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?” she cast a wary eye out over the crowd. Molly couldn’t blame her, but…</p><p>“No, think I’m better on my own for this.” He glanced around the room. “Remember how we talked about getting you out in the world more, and then you said you didn't want to, but then we said you're going to have to do it anyway?”</p><p>“I know, but-”</p><p>“This is those times. Just- Think of them as unusually snotty carnival patrons. Who you aren’t allowed to pick up and physically remove from the premises.” He paused, considered it. “Unless that’s something you really want to do, anyway.”</p><p>Probably a few of the people here could do with it. Either way, Molly would be betting on Yasha.</p><p>“So long as I don’t have to do the talking,” Yasha muttered, casting another look over towards the two wizards by the window.</p><p>“You’ll do fine,” Molly promised.</p><p>Caleb wasn’t hard to find. Molly doubted he ever would be again, if Jester’s god didn’t pony up some way to get the rings off them. He’d taken refuge over by the door - Molly was amazed he wasn’t already out of it - and there was no sign of Frumpkin, whom Molly had half-expected to see curled up in Caleb’s arms just as a self-soothing thing.</p><p>He didn’t seem at all surprised to see Molly there, but then, he must’ve felt Molly coming the same way Molly had known the way to come.</p><p>He looked...about as ever, honestly. If Molly hadn’t <em> felt </em>the dread still gnawing at him with every second, he might’ve thought Caleb was merely stressed or overwhelmed by the party - he was, a little, Molly could feel that too.</p><p>He did not look up as Mollymauk came over, his face empty in the eerie way that meant that he was seeing through Frumpkin’s eyes.</p><p>“Ah- <em> Hallo </em>, Mollymauk.”</p><p>“Hello to you too.” </p><p>Molly glanced around. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure, exactly, what it was he was supposed to do. He’d just...come running, with no real reason except that Caleb had been afraid, in a way that went beyond the low-grade anxiety that was almost a background hum by now, even after just...what had it been, two weeks? Probably Caleb would know it down to the minute, or if he didn’t now would be able to work it out.</p><p>Caleb’s hand shot out to catch his wrist. “Mollymauk,” he said, low and urgent, his unseeing eyes fixed somewhere over Molly’s left shoulder. “I- Listen to me. I helped you in the Gentleman’s bar the other night, yes?”</p><p>“...you did.”</p><p>“I need you to help me now. To- to make us even. You understand?”</p><p>Molly’s first thought was pure indignation. Caleb- Caleb had done him a solid, he wasn’t going to deny that. He wasn’t sure how much of one, but being caught in a lie by Cree would not have ended well by any possible stretch of the imagination. But had he honestly done all that, just to cash it in as a favour owed now? Did he really think he needed to, that Molly was the kind of arsehole who’d need that held over his head before he’d agree to help?</p><p>He swallowed that down. Later. They’d have to talk about that later. Preferably once they were well away from Zadash.</p><p>“What do you need-”</p><p>“-I do not think I am too conspicuous here - or I was not, before this peacock of a tiefling came after me - but I cannot know for sure,” Caleb said over him, leading Molly to entirely waste a glare on a wizard who couldn’t see him. “I- I would be safer outside, but I cannot go alone and continue to use Frumpkin’s eyes, so...”</p><p>He did not say ‘will you guide me’. He didn’t need to.</p><p>Molly swallowed. “All right,” he said, and gently, gingerly closed his fingers around Caleb’s wrist to pull him up, and awkwardly slinging an arm across his shoulders. “Just- Tell me if we’re going to have a repeat of that time in the sewers, will y-”</p><p>He didn’t get further. The words caught in his throat. All at once his heart was racing like he’d just run a mile. The scars on his arms itched and his teeth hurt from how tightly his jaw was clenched-</p><p>No.</p><p>No. That was not him. That was not his.</p><p>Molly drew in a deep, heaving breath. Explanations. He was going to want an explanation. Possibly multiple explanations.</p><p>“Mind telling me what that was all about?” he said in an undertone, as he tugged Caleb towards the door.</p><p>Caleb didn’t reply.</p><p>Molly nodded to the guard at the doors, and jerked his head at Caleb as if to suggest that his friend had simply overindulged after the fight they’d just had, and needed to be taken back to the inn to recuperate. It was amazing how much you could get across with one jerk of the head and a friend apparently most of the way to unconsciousness on your shoulder. Or it would be, if the friend would just play along.</p><p>“Come on,” he muttered, just loudly enough for the guards to pick up. “You’ll feel a lot better if we get some water into you…”</p><p>Caleb didn’t reply to that, either. He wasn’t picking up on Molly’s cues, either - he was standing too straight, even with Molly’s arm around him. He still looked too sober.</p><p>Molly mustered a bright, brittle smile for the guard. “This always happens,” he said in a confiding sort of tone. “He can fake it so long as he’s sitting down, but the minute he tries to walk in a straight line…”</p><p>“Uh-huh.” The guard, it had to be said, did not look especially convinced.</p><p>“You could try to look a bit drunker,” Molly muttered, once they were past the guard and had mostly disappeared into the revelling crowd. “Or, you know, slur or something. Off-key drinking songs are usually a good bet if you want to get kicked out of somewhere…”</p><p>Not so much as a snarky comment about how they were trying to lay low here. Molly frowned. He didn’t know much about magic, but he vaguely remembered Caleb saying something a few weeks back about not being able to hear anything when he was using Frumpkin’s ears.</p><p>“Ah- Caleb? Can you hear me?”</p><p>No response.</p><p>Molly considered this. “Caleb?” he prodded again. “If you don’t reply in thirty seconds I’m going to tell Jester you agreed to let her wash and braid your hair.”</p><p>No reply.</p><p>“Help! Help! Dragons are attacking the festival?” Molly tried. “Cats are evil-minded little demons in fluffy animal form who...oh, I can’t do it!” He rather wished he could’ve thrown out his arms for emphasis, but alas, dead weight of dead-to-the-world wizard who might not stop walking when Molly did. “Why is it people who don’t like cats always act like it- it <em> ennobles </em> them or something not to like cats?” He paused for a moment, then replied, in his best approximation of a Zemnian accent. “ <em> Ja </em>, you are quite right, Mollymauk, truly cat-haters deserve as many horrible fates as we can devise for them- And that’s another thing. Do you have some sort of grudge against nicknames? Not that I don’t like the way you say my name, but-”</p><p>“...<em> Wie bitte </em>?”</p><p>Molly froze. He plastered on a smile.</p><p>“Aaand there you are. See what you needed to?”</p><p>“I- <em> Ja </em>.” Caleb looked pale - paler even than usual, freckles standing out sharply against skin the colour of rancid milk - “The others...I fear they are in more serious trouble than they know.”</p><p>Molly looked back- Shit, Yasha was in there, and he’d left her on her own to go and babysit Caleb. Yasha could handle herself, he knew that, against anything actually trying to attack them she’d be fine, but...</p><p>“What kind of trouble?”</p><p>Caleb swallowed. “I- It is difficult to explain. There is…” he shook his head. “I don’t know if he will take an interest, but if he does-”</p><p>“Caleb, slow down. Who is ‘he’?”</p><p>Caleb was already fishing the little copper wire out of his pocket. “I- I will explain later.” His eyes flicked over Molly again. “You...of all of them, you have a right to know.”</p><p>“That’s good, I like having the right to know things - what do I have the right to know?”<br/>“ <em> Later </em>.” Molly felt the flare of magic as Caleb cast. “Nott, if you can hear me, you need to get out of the party now. Bring the others. Mollymauk and I are outside, we will meet you-” he glanced at Molly.</p><p>“Not the Leaky Tap,” Molly said, already thinking it through. “They know we’re there. Pumat’s place?”</p><p>Caleb nodded. “We will meet you at the Invulnerable Vagrant. Don’t-” A flicker of apprehension through the bond, and then. “Don’t tell the others you heard this from me.”</p><p>Well, if <em> that </em> wasn’t suspicious, Molly didn’t know what was. <br/>“So, this explanation is getting more interesting the more I don’t hear of it,” he said, falling into step at Caleb’s side as they crossed the Pentamarket towards the Invulnerable Vagrant.</p><p>Caleb glanced at him, sidelong and wary, the way Yasha looked at the crownsguard. It made something in Molly’s skin itch. He wasn’t the crownsguard in this scenario, was he?</p><p>“I know. Later. But I am going to want to hear it.”</p><p>“It is…” Caleb paused. “You were the one who said you didn’t care about any of our pasts.”<br/>“I don’t!” Molly paused.</p><p>All right, no. He cared about Yasha’s past, because Yasha cared about it. Because Zuala, by the sound of it, had been pretty amazing, and he’d have liked to have met her, if only so Yash could be happy and have one more person in her corner.</p><p>“I don’t care what any of you have <em> done </em> in the past,” he amended. “You don’t need to tell me who this guy is <em> to you </em>, but if we’ve blundered into some kind of danger, which we usually have, it might be useful to know what kind it is.”</p><p>Caleb gave a grim little nod. “His name is Trent Ikithon. The others know that much already. He is...he is a very powerful man in the Empire. The Archmage of Civil Influence, if that means anything to you. He…” Caleb drew in a breath. “He did not seem...I mean, he seemed irritated, but...we may have escaped the worst of it.”</p><p>“Okay. See. Wasn’t so hard, was it?” Molly said, offering a cautious smile, and carefully not asking where or how Caleb had made an enemy of what sounded like one of the most powerful wizards in the empire. He paused, then asked instead: “...what is ‘civil influence’, exactly?”<br/>“Propaganda.” Caleb’s voice wasn’t very much more than a whisper. “I do not know- You would not remember an ordinary Imperial education even if you had received one, but...his influence is <em> everywhere </em>, do you understand?”</p><p>A chill went up the back of Molly’s neck.</p><p>“I think I’m starting to. All the more reason to get out of Zadash in a hurry, then.”</p><p>Caleb grimaced. “I agree with you. But there are...there is something I need to do here in the city first.”</p><p>“Must be pretty urgent, if you’re willing to stay with him after you.”</p><p>“...I do not know that he is ‘after me’.” That was a lie. Molly wouldn’t even need the bond to know that. “But I- I would rather not attract his notice.”</p><p>“Would he recognise you?”</p><p>There was a long, still pause, and another sharp stab of second-hand pain.</p><p>“...I do not know.”</p><p><em> That </em>was the truth, and Molly wasn’t going to ask. He was a lot of things - liar, to start with, charlatan, to carry on with, damn fine swordsman if you wanted to be complimentary - but he didn’t like the thought of adding ‘hypocrite’ to the list.</p><p>Pumat’s place was all lit up, the bright reds and golds and oranges of the Harvest Crest banners complementing its stained wood and green-gold velvet exterior better than Molly would’ve guessed. One of the Pumats was still behind the counter when they ducked inside, and offered them a friendly wave in greeting, but only one of them, and other than them the store was all but deserted. Molly was going to take a wild stab in the dark and say Pumat Prime was out enjoying the festival, and maybe he’d taken a couple of other Pumats with him. Or they were in the back doing some other tasks. What did it feel like, he wondered, being Pumat? Was it one mind controlling all four bodies, or four separate people all of whom happened to look and think exactly the same? Just thinking about it made his head hurt.</p><p>Still, they were there, and needed healing potions, and it didn’t seem like Caleb had got a reply from Nott yet. Might as well make use of it while they were here and with full pockets, because as soon as Caleb had dealt with his whatever-it-was that was so urgent he was staying in a city where the Archmage of Civil Ignorance may or may not be after him to do it, they’d be leaving.</p><p>It didn’t take that long for the others to catch up with them, just long enough for Molly to stock up on health potions and have a pleasant chat with what turned out to be Pumat Three before Nott came scurrying through the door ahead of the rest of them, making a beeline for Caleb.</p><p>Jester was the next through the door, with Frumpkin in her arms and draped over her shoulder like a furry stole.</p><p>“We brought your cat!” she called out brightly, “That wizard guy wanted to keep him, but we got him back!”</p><p>Caleb coughed. “Er...thank you. Wait, which wizard guy?”</p><p>“Uh...the short one?” Beau said. “Hass, I think his name was? Something like that? Might’ve been ‘House’...”</p><p>“It’s Hass,” Caleb muttered, reaching out to pluck Frumpkin out of Jester’s arms and burying his nose in the cat’s soft fur.</p><p>Yasha was at the back of the group, looking slightly more comfortable now she was out of the party. Molly sidled over to her.</p><p>“So, getting out in the world of rich people parties. How bad was it?”</p><p>Yasha grimaced. “I...did not pick anyone up to physically remove them from the building.”</p><p>“That’s pretty good.” Molly glanced around. “So, Caleb heard everything, but he’s not sharing. What happened?”</p><p>Quite a lot, as it turned out. They’d all been very candid. Not so candid they’d said anything about where they had been that night, or what they had been doing, or they’d never have got out of there with their skins intact, but enough that they really, really shouldn’t dawdle about getting out of the city quickly before someone decided Yasha really was a Xhorhasian spy and decided to do something about this entirely imaginary threat.</p><p>Someone other than Nott, that was. Because, clearly, the sensible thing to do if you were a Xhorhasian spy was join up with a small travelling carnival as a bouncer, thus gaining access to all the classified military secrets that people were so keen to share with large, intimidating women in the process of throwing them out of said carnival for excessive rowdiness. Clearly. Molly was honestly surprised no-one had put all that together before.</p><p>Still, they managed to get agreed on a time to leave - before dusk tomorrow, which would hopefully be enough time for Caleb to do his whatever-it-was and the rest of them to get provisioned for the road, but still fast enough that they’d be out of town before the news started to percolate down from the top and the Righteous Brand decided to come recruiting. For now, they were going to have one last night taking advantage of everything Zadash had to offer. For them, that meant the Pillow Trove.</p><p>Molly had to say, it was nice not being stopped on the way into the Tri-Spires for once. Caleb did not seem to agree, with the way he was hugging Frumpkin, and the glares he was shooting at all three guards indiscriminately, but after his familiar’s last run-in with one of the crownsguard that was understandable enough.</p><p>It wasn’t that long a walk to the Pillow Trove from the gates of the Tri-Spire, but long enough for Jester to talk Yasha into a piggyback ride - with Jester as the piggy - and for Molly to come up with a hundred new ways to mispronounce whatever it was Caleb had had to say to that one guard at the gates who hadn’t been able to stop staring at Frumpkin. Another cat-hater, Molly presumed, who thus deserved his fate. He caught the odd flicker of something through the bond as they walked - disappointment, for a moment, and then a flash of fear that calcified into something hard and resigned and painful that sat in the pit of Molly’s stomach like a stone.</p><p>The Pillow Trove hadn’t actually got any less ornate, beautiful or luxurious since their last visit, though it <em> had </em> become less expensive, if not by quite as much as Jester had hoped. Her parcel from home had come in, though, which had to be a bit of a consolation, even if it meant retreating up to the rooms now instead of staying downstairs to enjoy the ambiance and see what sort of drinks they served at the bar of a place like this. <em> Without </em>the little magical seals that charged you just for picking something up to take a closer look at it, even if you didn’t drink a sip.</p><p>“Are there any other services that you will require while you're staying here this evening to celebrate?" Madam Luenna asked as she led them upstairs.</p><p>Nott’s tiny face screwed up. “What services are available?”<br/>“All kinds of services.”</p><p>“Bottle service?” Beau asked, sounding dubious.</p><p>“Wine can be delivered,” Madam Luenna agreed readily, “Ah- Companionship can be provided…”</p><p>Now, there was an idea. It had been...a while. Which wasn’t exactly new, but still...Molly hadn’t met with an amenable partner since before Trostenwald, and that had been most of a month ago.</p><p>“Massage?” he asked, and heard Fjord mutter ‘oh, shit’ somewhere nearby. Perceptive man.</p><p>“What kind of companionship do you have here available?” Yasha asked, leaning over.</p><p>“Ah, well…” Luenna cleared her throat. Molly could almost see the gears turning as she tried to figure out how to say it without using any of the many, many words fitted for the purpose. “Likely, uh...the best kind of companionship you can find.”</p><p>“Not the <em> best </em> kind,” Jester protested, apparently compelled to defend her mother’s honour. To be fair, though, if that song was anything <em> like </em>accurate, she was right.</p><p>It got even sweeter once she opened the box. It was...Molly didn’t have any regrets about not having parents. He never had. Gustav and Desmond were...were great, but that wasn’t what they were to him, not really. Still, there was something about the way Jester talked about her mother, and the way the Ruby wrote to her...</p><p>Still. No use pining after what he’d never had and never needed. No saying Lucien had ever had anything like that anyway, and if he ever had he clearly hadn’t valued it enough not to get himself killed. And, honestly...that would almost have been worse than Cree. He didn’t know what he’d do if someone appeared out of nowhere and started saying he was their long-lost son. Probably hop a boat for Marquet and never come back.</p><p>Across the room, Fjord stretched.</p><p>“All right, well, I'm getting tired. I'm going to turn in to the other room, if anybody feels like joining. Congratulations, Jester. That's very exciting.”</p><p>“How deep of a sleeper are you?” Molly asked, considering.</p><p>Fjord paused, halfway between sitting and standing. “I don’t know. I feel like, after a day like today, pretty fucking deep.”</p><p>Good thing to know, some tentmates could be weird about that.</p><p>Molly nodded. “Cool, we’ll find out. I’ll be right in.”</p><p>The Pillow Trove was more of a maze than the Leaky Tap had been, and more of one than any country inn Molly had ever stayed the night in, but it didn’t take too long to find his way back down to the lobby, and Madam Luenna.</p><p>“So, about that offer of companionship…”</p><p>She gave a polite smile. “Yes?”</p><p>“If someone were to want...a massage, say, and possibly some other...interesting...things depending on their mood. And also someone to just talk to them and feed them grapes and so on while all that was going on…”</p><p>The woman’s eyes flicked to Molly’s left hand, and Molly nearly let out a groan. Was there some kind of secondary enchantment on these rings that made them impossible to miss or something? What sort of paranoid person had <em> designed </em>the damn things?</p><p>“Well, I can definitely provide those requests. For how many people? Is this a two-companion request, or possibly more, and for the...ah...other interesting things, are you going to require companions open to...ah...multiples, or…”</p><p>“No, just one person,” Molly said, taking the hand with the ring off the table. Madam Luenna’s lips thinned a little, but she gave no  other outward sign of disapproval. “One client, I mean. I’d imagine you need at least two people for the rest of it.”</p><p>“Preference? Male, female, in between?”</p><p>Molly waved an airy hand. “Best hands, best conversationalist. I just- Surprise me.”</p><p>Luenna nodded. “Very well. That will run you twenty gold.”</p><p>This was going to be the most expensive night of pleasure Molly had ever known in his life, and something told him that it was going to be worth every copper.</p><p>Fjord was already sprawled out on the bed when Molly got back to the room, face-down in a pile of truly decadent pillows that Molly couldn’t wait to try out for himself. Caleb was curled up in an armchair over in the far corner with his nose buried in the smut book Jester had given him, the last time they’d paid a visit to the Tri-Spires. He stood up as soon as he saw Molly, though, and hurried over.</p><p>“I-” he cleared his throat and went on, more quietly this time. “I need to talk to you. In private.”</p><p>Molly blinked. “...you couldn’t have asked me that ten minutes ago?”</p><p>“I am sorry if this is- is a bad time, but-” Caleb swallowed. “There are- are things you need to- things you deserve to know. About what happened tonight and...other things. You- You have a right to know.”</p><p>A prickle of unease ran through the back of Molly’s mind. “...you’re sure you want to tell me this?”</p><p>Caleb nodded, avoiding Molly’s eyes. “I- I am sure that you should know. I- We will not be alone, there are others who- others who need to be present for this, but-”</p><p>Molly considered it. On the one hand, he had had plans for the evening. Quite interesting plans, and quite a lot of them. On the other...he <em> was </em>curious. And Caleb opened up to anyone so rarely that it really must be important if he was going to do it now.</p><p>“...all right,” he said, halfway to a sigh. “I am at your disposal. Just- give me a minute.”</p><p>“Ja- Yes, of course.” Caleb gave another sharp little nod, rubbing absently at his forearms. “I...I will need to get us another room - Fjord is...this is not for his ears.”</p><p>“Yeah, this room is going to be a bit occupied,” Molly agreed, and stepped aside as Caleb slipped out behind him. He went over to Fjord and shook his shoulder, just enough to stir him awake. “Hey. Got a present for you.”</p><p>“...huh, what?”</p><p>Molly grimaced. He’d been looking <em> forward </em>to this, dammit.  But...answers. A chance at a bit more actual trust between them all, to get to see behind those walls Caleb had up so high that it’d take a siege crew to get him to admit to having any emotions other than possibly gloom. Molly still didn’t know why that mattered to him so much, except- Except, apparently, that it did.</p><p>“Don’t worry,” he said, patting Fjord companionably on the shoulder. “You’ll notice them when they get here.”</p><p>As it happened, he ran into the two companions in the hallway on his way out after Caleb, who was being led up another staircase to another, smaller room. Man and woman, which was for some reason what people always tended to think of when Molly said ‘surprise me’, and both human. He flashed a vague smile in their direction.</p><p>“He’s in there,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t be surprised if he’s a little confused, I think he took a couple bad blows to the head back there.”</p><p>The young man cast a concerned look over at the door. “If he’s had a head injury…”</p><p>“What- Oh, no, he’s fine. Healers fixed him right up.” Molly grinned. “But don’t take my word for it, you’re going to want to ask him yourself.”</p><p>“We <em> will </em>ask,” the woman agreed, rather sharply, casting a look at her companion. From the muscles in her arms and shoulders, Molly thought he was going to guess she was the ‘best hands’ he’d requested.</p><p>“Sure you will,” he agreed, “No intention to cast any slights on your professional ethics. I’ll just get out of your way.”</p><p>It did give him a bit of a pang to leave them, but there’d be other inns, and other companions. Probably nothing like this anytime soon unless they wanted to pay a visit to Jester’s family, but you couldn’t miss what you’d never had. Molly had lived half his life by that principle, and he’d be damned if he was abandoning it now.</p><p>Caleb’s third room that he had taken was two doors down from the one they’d started in, and basically identical in all respects but the colour scheme, in shades of blue and green and gold that made Molly think of the sea, or at least the way it looked when the circus had wanted to put on a production involving it.</p><p>Caleb was already inside when Molly got there - he must’ve slipped in just ahead of him, while Molly was distracted with the masseuse and her assistant outside - and was pacing back and forth in front of the fire. There was no sign of Frumpkin, and Caleb looked...about as grim as Molly had ever seen him, and that was up against some very tough competition, still rubbing at his arms the way he did sometimes, the bond a churning, roiling mass of fear and guilt and pain, almost worse than it had been during that instant of terror at the party, as bad as it had ever been that night in the sewers.</p><p>“Well, we’re alone,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “What did you want to talk about?”</p><p>Caleb didn’t turn to look at him. “I...I would rather not need to repeat this.”</p><p>“...we’re going to have company?”</p><p>“Ja, I told you-” Caleb shook his head. “I...realise this is...I am sorry, I didn’t realise you had other plans for the evening.”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “We’ll have other opportunities. You said this was something I needed to hear.”</p><p>“Yes, that is right, you...as I said, you have a right to know what- what manner of man it is you have bound yourself to.”</p><p>Molly snorted. “I know that,” he said. “Or I’m starting to. Maybe you’ve met him? Wizard, yea tall, red hair, fondness for cats…”</p><p>Caleb made an awful, strangled noise that might’ve been second-cousin to a laugh.</p><p>“That is not all I am.”</p><p>“I know that.” Molly shrugged. “I told you, it doesn’t matter to me.”</p><p>Caleb’s mouth twisted. “You...may want to hear it, before you decide that.” He paused, and put a hand to his ear. “-<em> was </em>-? Oh. Room six.” He took his hand away. “I...Beauregard and Nott will be joining us for this,” he said dully. </p><p>Molly wished Caleb would look at him. “You don’t have to tell them anything either, you know.”</p><p>Caleb’s jaw tightened, the tension in him winding itself that little bit tighter.</p><p>“Yes, I do.”</p><p>There didn’t seem to be any real reply to that.</p><p>Beau and Nott were a few minutes getting there - long enough for Molly to get bored and wish he hadn’t left his coat and everything in its pockets in the other room - but eventually, the knock came at the door, and Caleb called out to tell them that it was unlocked.</p><p>“The fuck are you doing here?” were the first words out of Beau’s mouth when she saw him.</p><p>Molly shrugged. “Apparently I needed to hear this! What are <em> you </em>doing here? I get Nott, but-”</p><p>“I have <em> literally </em>no idea why Caleb wanted either of you!” Nott shrilled. “I just got told to bring the monk, and I’ve brought the monk, so what are we doing? Is this...escape plans, for tomorrow, if it all goes wrong, or…?”</p><p>“Ahh...erm...potentially.” Caleb shifted. “Um. You know, erm, we’re leaving soon, and Beauregard has an in at, er, one of the bigger libraries and I...I want to go there, before we leave.”</p><p>Nott blinked, and cast a disbelieving look at Molly. Molly couldn’t blame her - he didn’t know why he was needed for this conversation either.”<br/>“...excellent,” she said. “Let’s go! Tomorrow, right? When they’re open? Or...are you trying to talk Molly into staying a bit longer, or…”</p><p>“No. No, this will not take more than a day. Beauregard has given me a...a condition. She had some questions for me, and I would like to answer them, but I don’t feel right...er..telling her, and not telling you. And Mollymauk, also, has- has a right to hear these things.”</p><p>A concerned expression passed across Nott’s face, and then came back and set up camp there.</p><p>“Sure,” she said softly. “Yes, whatever you want, Caleb. It sounds serious.”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “Not as though I can go back to our room,” he said, with a lightness he didn’t quite feel.</p><p>Nott shot a glare at him.</p><p>Caleb’s hands were shaking as he thrust them into the pockets of his coat, Molly could see that from here, could almost feel the hammering of his heart.</p><p>“Ah- Beauregard, may I ask you a question to start?”</p><p>Beau looked startled. “Uh...yeah.”</p><p>“How do you feel about the Empire?”</p><p>That was...loaded, as questions went. But then...somehow, Caleb had managed to upset an Archmage of the Cerberus Assembly. Molly...wasn’t the  most politically aware person in the room, he was well aware, but he’d heard enough just since they came to Zadash to know that that was more trouble than anyone got into by keeping their head down and minding their own business.</p><p>Beau looked suddenly uneasy. “Oh...I mean…”</p><p>“Are you in favour of how things are going here?”</p><p>Beau paused. “No,” she admitted. “But I’m not in favour of many things.” This was, Molly had to concede, objectively true. “I don’t like a lot of things,” Beau went on. “Kind of have a problem with, like, authority, and they’re like the epitome of authority. I watched my father sacrifice a lot to try and impress those people, so...I’m not sure what it was for. Seems like a lot.”</p><p>“Are you comfortable with business as usual?” Caleb asked, his voice entirely flat.</p><p>“Wh- Huh- What? How do you mean?”</p><p>“Do you approve of how the Empire is going?”</p><p>“I’m not, I mean…” Beau shrugged. “I’m not, like, <em> super </em>invested in the political spectrum, I just don’t want any part of it. So, no? I think it could be better? No.”</p><p>There was a very long, still pause, as Caleb apparently decided whether or not he believed her.</p><p>His face didn’t give anything away. “Oh? Not super invested in how the Empire is going?”</p><p>“I- I have no investment in their success or failure,” Beau snapped. “I think most of them tend to be scumbags who want monetary and influential gain, and I think they treat their poor pretty shitty and they treat their elite pretty great, and I think that's sucky. Yeah, I think they're garbage people, but Molly thinks I'm a garbage person-”</p><p>“Self-awareness is the first step to improvement,” Molly retorted. “I mean, that’s three whole things you give a damn about right there, so...progress.”</p><p>“Oh, you know what, fuck you, man-!” Beau thrust out her hands. “Yeah, I- I watched my father sacrifice a lot to get where he was, and I'm not sure if it was fucking worth it. So the Empire doesn't lean favorably in my...spectrum. But I also don't care if they really live or die or...whatever.”</p><p>Caleb rubbed at his arms again, already hunching in on himself.</p><p>“Well, I really want to go to the library tomorrow,” he said, in a broken, shaking voice that made something twist painfully in Molly’s chest.</p><p>“Caleb-” he started.</p><p>Caleb didn’t even seem to hear him. “This may be a very stupid decision of mine.”</p><p>Beau shrugged. “Yeah.”</p><p>“What- What does she want from you?” Nott demanded, casting a suspicious look over towards Beau.</p><p>For a moment, Caleb was still. And then he turned to look at Nott directly.</p><p>“Would you be willing to leave with me tomorrow if I asked you to?” It was almost a whisper.</p><p>Not startled, then stared. “...of course.”</p><p>“Just the two of us?”</p><p>Nott nodded. “Absolutely. Right away. Whatever you want. But- But <em> why </em>? And what about…” and Nott’s eyes flicked to Molly.</p><p>Caleb’s gaze followed hers. He turned.</p><p>“Mollymauk. If Nott and I leave here tonight, you will not pursue us? We...may attempt to dissolve this...our marriage separately, or- or meet again to end it, but you will make no attempt to harm me or Nott because of what I reveal here today?”</p><p>A horrible suspicion began building in the back of Molly’s mind. Had Caleb...a mage from the capital, Cree had said- But no, she’d said it was a woman...was it possible, though? These things changed - Molly himself was proof of that. He’d been ‘her’ to a few towns they’d passed through, and ‘them’ to a few others, and neither one had felt at all unnatural.</p><p>But then, what was it to him if Caleb had? Molly wasn’t Lucien. Why should he care two straws about Lucien’s revenge, if that was what Caleb was worried about? He was almost annoyed that Caleb had to ask.</p><p>“Cross my heart,” Molly said, drawing a cross across his chest in roughly the right place with one finger for emphasis. “I won’t follow you.”</p><p>Beau was frowning. “Is the secret <em> that </em>valuable?”</p><p>Caleb drew in one long, shuddering breath.</p><p>“I am going to tell you the story of how I murdered my mother and father.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Er, to clarify, in the scene at the party where Caleb is talking to Molly while in Frumpkin, he cannot, in fact, hear a word that Molly is saying, and only knows he's there due to the rings coming with a handy Molly Positioning System.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Well, this chapter has been anxiety-inducing, as not only is it a big keystone chapter, it's also an awkward transitional chapter. So that's two ways in which I could've spectacularly screwed this up. Hopefully I've avoided both, but if not...be kind?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Caleb told his story like a condemned man at confession - plainly and fully, with no attempt at self-justification or exculpation.</p><p>Every word left a burning sour taste in the back of Molly’s throat.</p><p>He couldn’t see, in Caleb’s pale and careworn face now, the shadow of the boy to whom everything had come easily. Couldn’t even imagine it...Caleb, young and shining with confidence, sure of himself as he only ever was, now, in the grip of terror. Or maybe it was the certainty that frightened him. Molly couldn’t say he didn’t understand that, after everything.</p><p>He couldn’t say he understood much of the rest of it. The Empire was...had never really meant anything to Molly, beyond just being where he happened to live. The circus had paid their dues...whenever they couldn’t possibly avoid it, which was rare enough, and usually a code for ‘bribery’, and he’d had a few run-ins with the crownsguard, few of them friendly, but beyond that the Empire was just a word to him. He couldn’t imagine being willing to kill for it, <em> wanting </em>to kill for it. The way Caleb apparently had.</p><p>“Caleb,” Beau said, slow and cautious. “That’s...deeply fucked up. You know that, right?”</p><p>Caleb glanced away, wiping at his eyes with two fingers, the constant background ache of guilt and regret and shame almost overpowering now, thick enough to choke on. </p><p>“...yeah.”</p><p>Molly shot a glare at her. “I think he got that, Beau.”</p><p>“Does he, though?” Beau jerked her head at Caleb.</p><p>“<em> Yes </em>.”</p><p>“Please-” Caleb interrupted, swallowing. “I need...I need to finish this. And if I don’t do it now, then…” he hunched deeper into his coat. “I do not know if I will be able to do it again.”</p><p>“You don’t have to tell us,” Molly said, glaring at Beau some more, because what the hell kind of person asked someone to disclose their entire, hideous life story just to get them into a library?</p><p>“No- I- I do. I do need to.” Caleb scrubbed a hand over his face again. “I...so. A few months of this, of studying, of a little bit of torture, a little bit of of murdering- dissidents and traitors and deviants...”</p><p>His eyes flicked over all of them then, lingering an extra second on Molly. Well. He’d been called a deviant often enough, in varying tones of contempt and affection. None of those times had ever left him with this growing coldness in his chest, the little flicker of fear - not fear of Caleb, but fear nonetheless. Caleb’s face twisted and he looked away, visibly steeling himself before he could go on.<br/>“Then one day your parents are brought in as traitors,” Beau finished for him bleakly. Caleb was silent, and Beau stared at him. “No?”</p><p>“No.” It was barely more than a whisper, hardly audible over the crackling of the fire. Caleb was staring into the depths of it now, that same distant, haunted look on his face, and all of a sudden Molly knew, with a sick and lurching feeling in the pit of his stomach, that even that was not the worst of it yet.</p><p>He had never been sorrier to be right in his life.</p><p>“I was so <em> sure </em>,” Caleb was saying now, his voice breaking. “I was so sure...until I wasn’t. And, uhm...and I broke a bit.”</p><p>There was an edge of laughter in his voice, wild and hysteric and not entirely sane, but Molly didn’t think he’d ever heard anything less funny in his life.</p><p>“Did you go in after them?” Nott asked, her great yellow eyes wide and round as gold coins.</p><p>“No.” Caleb reached up to brush the hair out of his face, huddling deeper into his tattered coat. “No, I went to a- an asylum for a number of years. I- It- I- I broke. I broke. And I don’t...remember so well what happened to me there. It was, ah, quite a number of years.”</p><p>Molly glanced around the room to see if anyone else was going to ask, and then, when it became clear nobody was going to, said: “Asylum?”<br/>“It is...a kind of hospital.” Caleb grimaced. “Or...no. Hospitals are where you go to try and- try and be made better, but I do not know...it did not seem as though...I...I suppose they just wanted to forget about me. Or- Sometimes I...sometimes it seemed as though Trent was there, or Astrid or Wulf or...or others, people I did not know, but…” he shook his head. “There is...so little of that time is clear to me. They...I heard, after I was...was lucid again that sometimes I screamed and cried out, or- or talked to people who were not there. Maybe I only believed I saw them...I do not know.”</p><p>Molly swallowed, tasting bile. He almost wished that he had said ‘no’, earlier. That he was still in the room that had been theirs with those two hired companions...but then Caleb would be in here still, cutting and cracking himself open to put every bloodied, broken part of himself on display to answer a question and what...what library could possibly have been worth this? What sort of fucked-up person thought any of this was even remotely a fair thing to ask?</p><p>Well. Beau did, apparently. It was an awful thing, to be disappointed in someone he hadn’t thought he had any real expectations of at all. But, looking back across the room, Beau looked every bit as horror-struck by all this as Molly felt.</p><p>Caleb went on, apparently heedless - Molly wasn’t even sure he could see them anymore, his eyes distant and glazed-over and <em> empty </em>in a way that made Molly’s skin crawl.</p><p>“Years later, a...a woman was there,” Caleb swallowed, and Molly saw his grip on the mantel tighten, his knuckles white with strain. “And- and she - another patient - put hands on me and...ah...and she took the clouds away. She took it <em> all </em>away, and not just my...madness...but…” He trailed off for a moment, his face twisting again and his mind, brushing against Molly’s, twisted and struggled against whatever it was he meant to say next like a fox in a snare. “But the fake memories that Ikithon put in my head of my parents.”</p><p>“Fake memories?” Nott asked, tentative in a way Molly didn’t think he’d ever seen from her before.</p><p>“Wanting to betr- Yes,” Caleb had turned away from the fire now, and was rubbing again at his bandaged forearms.</p><p>Nott blinked up at him. “Wait, there was a false memory? He tricked you?”</p><p>“Into hearing their talks against the Empire, is that what it was?” Beau asked. Molly nearly jumped. He’d half-forgotten she was there at all, he’d been that caught up in the story, and the pain.</p><p>“Yes-” Caleb said, the words tumbling over each other as if he couldn’t get them out fast enough. “Yes- But it doesn't matter, because I still wanted to do it when I did it.”</p><p>“But you didn’t know what you were doing!” Nott protested.</p><p>“So what?”</p><p>“You were<em> brainwashed </em>-”</p><p>“So <em> what </em>!”</p><p>“-programmed!”</p><p>“Doesn’t matter, I should have-” Caleb broke off, his chest heaving. It had been almost a yell.</p><p>“Would you do it again?” Molly asked, already knowing the answer.</p><p>Caleb made a noise like a wounded beast.</p><p>“Molly!” Beau hissed.</p><p>“It’s a fair question!”</p><p>“No,” Caleb said, his voice shaking. “No, I wouldn’t. I- I hope I wouldn’t, but what- what does that matter? I’m a disgusting person. It doesn’t matter. Anyway, all that gone, just like that. And, ah...and I ran. Not right away; I, er, pretended like nothing had changed for several weeks. She...was stark raving mad fifteen minutes later herself, the woman who helped me. And I killed one of Trent’s people there, and took this-” he plucked at a cord Molly hadn’t noticed before - a rough thing, thick twine, and on it an amulet, the shape of an owl rendered in gold, clutching a single perfect pearl in its talons. “-And this has been keeping me hidden for years. For five years. I thought it was foolproof, but-”</p><p>“What do you mean hidden?” Nott asked, leaning forward a little where she sat perched at the end of the bed.</p><p>Caleb was a few long seconds about replying.</p><p>“...they can find who they want,” he said at last. “But not with this. They cannot find me. I thought nothing could, but...well, Mollymauk has put the lie to that.”</p><p>The rings, Molly realised. No wonder Caleb had been so afraid all this time. Or maybe he had always felt that way. Whether they could find him by magic or not, if he was to be believed he was still a hunted man. </p><p>Caleb drew in another breath, obviously struggling to find the words, and Molly tensed, half-expecting - what? Some new horror? How much more tragedy could one past <em> hold </em>?</p><p>“So, I would really like to get into that library, because I would-”</p><p>“Like to run again?” Beau said flatly. </p><p>Caleb looked around. “Hm? No. No, I like- you all.”</p><p>Beau’s eyes narrowed. “You were just talking with Nott about running tomorrow.”</p><p>“He’s telling the truth,” Molly cut in. “And he was <em> also </em>talking about us hunting them down and hurting them, which I think we can agree isn’t going to happen.” If this situation had been one bit less awful, he’d have made a crack about how awful it was, being forced to agree with Beau about this, but...honestly, his heart wasn’t in it.</p><p>Caleb looked up, blinking at him. “...well, that depends on you. On you and on Beauregard, rather.”</p><p>“If I don’t let you in?” Beau said, raising an eyebrow.</p><p>Caleb just looked at her, long and level and defenceless. “On if you can keep a secret.”</p><p>Beau shook her head. “Caleb, I- I’m good at keeping secrets. Can’t speak for Molly, but-”</p><p>“Fuck you!” Molly snapped, and there was nothing playful about it this time. “I’m not…if it were something harmless, I might spill it if I thought it’d be funny, or I was drunk, or I thought someone needed to know. This isn’t harmless. And it’s not mine to tell.” He’d never tell any of them a word of what Yasha had told him, about Zuala and her tribe and the time she couldn’t remember. Even if they knew what questions to ask.</p><p>Caleb swallowed. “...thank you.”</p><p>“You heard us talking to Trent. You know he wants Yasha, and you're the only person who knows the atrocities that this man - who <em> utterly </em>gave me the creeps, by the way, so I'm feeling a little bit validated in the fact that I think I, you know, read him pretty well-”</p><p>“Miracles do happen,” Molly said snidely, more out of habit than anything else.</p><p>“Anyway-” Caleb started.</p><p>Beau spoke over him. “I’m just saying, you have a responsibility now.”</p><p>“A responsibility?” Molly snapped, a sudden flash of white-hot, protective rage running through him. “Really, <em> that’s </em>what you’re going with? Caleb- You said you believed in second starts. That means you get one too. And you get the choice of what it is you’re going to do with it. Personally, I think you’ve done a pretty solid job with yours so far.”</p><p>“That is…” Caleb coughed, and Molly felt a flutter of something he couldn’t quite name through the bond. “The situations are- are not the same, Mollymauk.”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “You remember, and I don’t. Me, I didn’t have any choice about being a new person. I am one, and I’m glad I’m one because the more I hear about Lucien, the worse he sounds, but I didn’t choose it. It sounds like you didn’t have much of a choice either, but you’re choosing now, and so far, it seems like you’re choosing to be the sort of person who wouldn’t do that again. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.”</p><p>“Yeah, <em> sometimes </em> , maybe,” Beau retorted. “But this time, there’s this asshole running around - you think he’s still doing shit like this to other kids?”<br/>Caleb looked down at his hands. “It is...quite probable, yes. If not him, then…then someone else. I don’t know if there were- If there are other cells in training than the one I was a part of.”</p><p>Beau nodded. “Look, I’m not saying you have to, like...devote your whole life to this. But if this guy’s still out there, and you know about it, don’t you owe it to...fuck, I don’t know. Your parents, maybe? Or- Yourself…? To keep him from hurting more people.”</p><p>Caleb’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Well, that's precisely why I want into this library.”</p><p>“You want to take down Trent,” Beau said, as if she were only just realising it, as if she hadn’t just told Caleb that was his only possible choice. Caleb meant it, Molly knew. Caleb would destroy himself doing it, and think it only right and proper, and gods, what a waste it would be. Trent Ikithon needed to die in agony, and sooner rather than later, but not...not if that was the price. </p><p>“Among other things.”</p><p>Beau let out a low, satisfied breath, as if that had been the answer she’d been hoping for all along - it had certainly been the answer she was nudging for. “What are you hoping to find?”</p><p>For a few long moments, Molly wasn’t even sure Caleb knew the answer to that.</p><p>“...anybody can make lights,” Caleb said after a few moments, so flat he might’ve been talking about any ordinary, everyday thing. “Anybody could send a message through a wire. I want to <em>bend reality to my will </em>.”</p><p>And the hairs went up on the back of Molly’s neck. For a moment, he felt- unmoored, not sure where or when he was. He’d heard a rant like this before, he thought, but- He hadn’t, had he?</p><p>Beau had almost laughed when Caleb first said it, but she sobered quickly. </p><p>“Caleb...you don’t, though. No-one wants that level of power and responsibility,”</p><p>Molly grimaced. Things kept conspiring to make him agree with Beau tonight. “Or, at least,” he added. “The process of getting them...I know nothing about any of this,” he admitted. “But once you get that powerful...I’ve never heard a story, or seen a play, or anything that suggested you can get something like that without a <em> serious </em>sting in the tail.”</p><p>“There will be a price. I am aware of that.” Caleb didn’t look at him. “And I will pay it. So. Now you know. I told you why I am afraid of fire. So you are going to bring me to that library.”</p><p>Beau nodded, a little jerk of the head. “Don’t worry, I’ll take you to the library. There are two options here. You can selfishly try and go after this guy for your own vendetta, or you can use your motives to prevent others from getting hurt in a very similar way.”</p><p>Speaking from Molly’s experience, there were never only two options. Didn’t mean that any of the myriad of options you had were particularly good, but anyone who used the words ‘there are two options’ was wilfully blinding either you or themselves to all the other possibilities out there.</p><p>“Both of those are appealing to me,” Caleb said, before Molly could voice all of that, handily proving his point for him.</p><p>“All right.” Beau folded her arms. “I know you just make dancing lights- or at least you can feel like you just make dancing lights-” she said after a moment, a bit awkwardly. “But those dancing lights make sure I can punch people in the fucking face whenever I can't see shit. A little bit of teamwork goes a long way.”</p><p>...and there Beau went making him agree with her again. Molly was tentatively sure that that was a veiled attempt to say that, when or if Caleb wanted to go for his revenge, they’d be with him, but just in case he wasn’t, he should probably say something to that effect.</p><p>“...what she said,” he managed after a few seconds’ desperate thought. He grimaced. “I cannot <em> believe </em>you forced me to say that. I’m not...sure about this ‘bending reality to your will’ thing, but the rest of it…” he shrugged. “I’m willing to go and murder your old teacher whenever you are.”</p><p>Caleb gave him a faintly alarmed look. “That...that is...very good to hear, Mollymauk, but...it will be a very long time before I am...am anywhere near powerful enough to have any hope of defeating him.”</p><p>“I’ll help,” Nott said staunchly, scurrying over and reaching up to pat Caleb on the arm, the highest point of him that she could reach. A flare of warmth bloomed in Molly’s chest that was almost certainly not his own. “I’m...I’m not very good at magic, but maybe he isn’t immune to crossbow bolts to the back of the head. I mean, you’re kinda squishy, and he’s an old guy anyway, so…”</p><p>“I...am afraid it will not be so simple as that,” Caleb admitted, an edge of hysteric laughter creeping back into his voice. “But...thank you, Nott. That...it means...a great deal...to hear you say that.” He glanced around at the rest of the room - at Molly and Beau, the two outsiders here - and then away again. “Ah- Um. Okay, good,” he said, in a much smaller voice. “You know, I think Nott and I are going to retire now. Maybe you can go get that food for the others?”</p><p>It was a very clear dismissal, and, credit where credit was begrudgingly due, Beau took it as such. Molly didn’t. For a few reasons - one being, he was pretty sure that their room would still be occupied, and while he had no particular objections to sleeping through a tent-mate having sex, quietly sitting in the corner and sewing or working on his cards while Fjord was having whatever flavour of nice time struck his fancy with the two companions Molly had hired felt a bit like watching someone else eating a delicious banquet that Molly had paid for, and not leaving him a crumb.</p><p>Nott glared at him. “What’re you still doing here? You heard Caleb, we’re going to bed. Now. Soon.”</p><p>“Nott,” Caleb said quietly. “It’s…” he broke off. “Is there anything you wish to say to me, Mollymauk?”</p><p>There were a lot of things Molly wanted to say, but somehow he couldn’t find the words for any of them. If it were Yasha, standing there and feeling this way, hollowed-out and shaken and so weighed down by what had been done to her, and what she had done in turn...then he’d know what to do. But for Caleb...there was nothing Molly could do to fix what had happened to Caleb, any more than he could fix what Yasha’s tribe had done to her. It wasn’t any easier to live with the second time.</p><p>“...yeah,” he managed. “Caleb- This doesn’t change anything. It’s…” he paused. “It doesn’t matter to me whether it was your fault or not. I don’t think it was, but even if it were...that boy you told us about, the one who glided through life, everything just working for him? I never knew him. I don’t know if I’d’ve liked him. I’m going to say probably not. I like <em> you </em>, though. You’ve...you’ve been decent. Even when I wasn’t expecting you to be. I’m glad I talked you into coming to the carnival back in Trostenwald. And...that’s what matters to me. I’m sorry it happened to you. I’m not sorry you’re here because of it.”</p><p>Caleb wouldn’t meet his eyes. “...thank you.”</p><p>Slowly, carefully, telegraphing every move to give Caleb as much time as possible to step out of the way, Molly reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. Even with so much warning, Caleb still tensed for a moment under Molly’s hand, but there was none of the wrenching terror of that night in the sewers, even as Molly reeled him in just that little bit closer, still slow and careful and giving him all the time in the world to pull away, and turned it into the world’s most awkward hug.</p><p>It had been, quite clearly, a very long time since anyone Caleb’s own size had hugged him. He didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his hands, and he was so stiff at first that Molly was half-ready to step away and start apologising before something in his spine seemed to melt and, gingerly, he brought his arms up to hug Molly back, just lightly, before stepping away. Or trying to.</p><p>“...sorry about that,” Molly said quickly, uncoiling his tail from around Caleb’s knee. “It has a mind of its own sometimes.”</p><p>“I...had noticed.” Caleb said shakily. He didn’t feel <em> good </em>, but...honestly, after everything he’d said, Molly hadn’t expected him to. He cast an almost pleading look at Nott, who glared up at Molly, tapping the stock of her crossbow meaningfully where it still rested on her back.</p><p>There really wasn’t any misinterpreting that. Not that Molly didn’t consider it, but...no. Caleb didn’t want him, Molly wasn’t going to push. He’d learnt that much from the sewers, and Caleb had been pushed into enough for one life. More than enough. Molly wondered vaguely whether or not presenting him with Trent Ikithon’s head on a spike would be considered a friendly gift or just plain kill-stealing. Probably he’d have to fight Nott for the privilege, though.</p><p>“I’ll keep your secret for you,” he said, just for Caleb’s ears. “And whatever you decide about Ikithon, I’m in. But you don’t owe anyone anything, all right? If you’re doing this, do it for you.”</p><p>Caleb managed a rather wan smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “...I don’t know who else you think I do things for,” he muttered. “Goodnight, Mollymauk.”</p><p>“Night, Caleb.”</p><p>Stepping out into the corridor felt...strange. Like waking up or a nightmare, almost. Or like those first, bright, blurred days at the carnival. It almost came as a surprise that this - this brightly-lit hallway with its soft carpets and brightly-painted walls - could be real. Like he’d stepped from one world into another between Caleb’s room and the hallway.</p><p>The feeling didn’t go away even when he ducked back into their room to collect his coat, and found Fjord sprawled out on the bed, the masseuse sitting beside rather than astride him, apparently just finishing up with some of the muscle knots in Fjord’s thighs, while the other companion, the man, was sitting up on the pillows by Fjord’s head, apparently deep in conversation.</p><p>“-I don’t think I’ve ever...ever seen one,” Fjord was saying as Molly came in, in a voice that sounded quite unlike himself. Or at least, the ‘himself’ that Molly was familiar with. “You hear stories about them, mostly. My old captain, Vandren, he didn’t much care for those tales, but you know the way sailors gossip. Or...do you? You’re pretty landlocked here, so I don’t know if you get so many…”</p><p>“A few, now and again,” the young man replied, plucking up a berry from the plate beside him and offering it to Fjord, and then shrugging and eating it himself when Fjord shook his head. “Mostly they aren’t looking for conversation, though. You’re my first.”</p><p>There was an edge of coy invitation in his voice, and Fjord coloured a deeper green.</p><p>“...right,” he muttered, and then his head twisted around and his eyes widened. “Molly!”</p><p>“Having fun?” Molly asked, almost a purr, heading over towards the chair he’d left his coat on.</p><p>Fjord was, it turned out, a full-body blusher, the tide of darker green starting at his arse and sweeping up his back.</p><p>“I...uh...I thought you and Caleb were…” he started, his usual familiar accent winching itself back into place.</p><p>Molly shrugged. “Came back for my cards,” he said airily. “Might stick around for a bit. Are you going to eat the rest of that?”</p><p>“What- Uh- I mean, you can have some if you like...I mean...you paid for it, but…” Fjord squirmed a little under the masseuse’s hands, and Molly allowed himself a grin, finding his cards in one of the inside pockets of his coat and wondering whether Jester might let him borrow some of her new inks - it had been a while since he had access to <em> really good </em> pigments.</p><p>“Great, thanks.” He collected a handful of assorted berries and half a pomegranate and paused in the doorway. “Beau said something about a charcuterie plate in the girls’ room, if you’re interested.”</p><p>“I...uh...maybe later?” Fjord coughed. “Kinda in the middle of something here.”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “Just don’t expect us to save you anything. Lovely meeting you, by the way,” he added, smiling at the masseuse and her assistant. “Didn’t catch your names before.”</p><p>“Phryne,” the masseuse said shortly.</p><p>“I’m Seiyr,” her companion added, flashing a polite return smile.</p><p>“Charmed,” Molly replied, with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. “I’ll be in the other room. Want me to save you anything?”</p><p>Fjord glanced up at Seiyr for a moment, then shook his head. “I, uh, think we’re good with the fruit.”</p><p>Fjord’s sigh of relief as he left the room wasn’t especially flattering, but Molly was willing to overlook it, this once. The girls’ room was just next door, and they hadn’t locked the door - probably hadn’t seen any point in it, with food on the way and all of them still awake.</p><p>“Fjord’s still got company,” he said, by way of explanation, when Jester, Beau and Yasha looked around. “And Caleb’s in with Nott. Mind if I stay here for a bit?”</p><p>Jester shrugged. “Sure. You want to play truth-or-dare?”</p><p><em> I would like to play truth or dare, but without the dare. </em>Molly didn’t shudder, but it was a close-run thing.</p><p>“I...think I’ve had enough truth to last a lifetime, if I’m honest,” he said, ironically truthfully. “I’ve still got my cards, though, if you want another reading. Or...you know, there’s games for them.”</p><p>Jester’s eyes went wide. “You can play <em> games </em> with <em> fortune-telling </em> cards?”<br/>“‘s where the name comes from,” Molly offered. “Tarocco. I can show you, if you’d like.”</p><p>Beau grunted. “Gotta be more honest than anything else you do with them.”</p><p>Molly casually flipped her off, and for a moment, things felt almost normal.</p><p>Jester was almost bouncing in place. “Yasha, do you want to play?”<br/>“I…” Yasha shrugged and looked around. “Card games and I...don’t always go that well together. I’ll watch you.”</p><p>It should not have been possible for a tiefling to look quite as much like a kicked puppy as Jester was capable of. Either it was a learned skill or the result of remarkable natural talents, and either way,  Molly wished he could pull it off. He’d never been able to manage ‘cute’, even when he was new, and had always felt vaguely jealous of people who could.</p><p>“Okay. But, you know, if you want to join in, you can just tell us, right? Or we can do something else-”</p><p>“No, I’m fine.” Yash gave a shy little smile. “I’m...actually, it’s been a long day. It’ll be nice to just...think it over for a little bit.”</p><p>As distractions went, it wasn’t the best Molly had ever had. He did his best. Never let it be said Mollymauk Tealeaf couldn’t find something to distract himself when the world was being utter shite. Somehow, though, it just wasn’t working for him tonight.</p><p>Part of that was the bond, Caleb’s gloom and guilt seeping into him no matter how hard he tried to keep it out. The other half, though...he couldn’t blame Caleb for that. Molly almost wanted to go to Yasha, to ask her...what was he supposed to do with this? Could he help, and...should he? But he’d promised Caleb he wouldn’t, and Yasha...Yash would get it, Molly thought. He knew there were things she hadn’t told him, things about how she left Xhorhas, what had happened between Zuala dying and Yasha coming to the circus. She had nightmares about them, sometimes. Yasha would’ve been a better person to tell than Molly, probably, but Molly was the one Caleb seemed to feel he <em> owed </em>something.</p><p>Molly won the first hand, just by dint of being the one person playing who’d done it before, but it was closer than it had any right to be, and by the third hand, Beau and Jester were catching up on him, distracted as Molly was. Jester had the makings of a right ruthless card sharp, if she ever cared to use them, and Beau never forgot a thing, if it was in her favour.</p><p>They played six games before Jester, yawning, announced her intention to call it a night, and Molly headed back to the room he’d be sharing with Fjord again to find the two hired companions gone, and half the fruit platter still there. He polished the rest of it off - no sense in wasting something like that, and Fjord appeared to be already asleep, or pretending to be - before nearly collapsing onto the bed with his trousers still on. There was only one, though it was big enough that he, Fjord and Caleb could all have fit in it without much trouble, even if it might’ve got a bit cosy doing it. Fjord had put a bolster down the middle, apparently in an attempt to preserve his modesty. Molly didn’t know whether or not to be to be affronted that Fjord thought he needed the deterrent. Not that Fjord wasn’t good-looking, in a certain rugged, cover-of-a-bodice-ripper sort of way, but sex was only fun if everyone was on board with it, and Molly had yet to be convinced that Fjord had any interests in that direction at all. He could make a bundle modelling for paintings like the ones at Chastity’s Nook, if the artist could only get him to stop blushing.</p><p>The dull ache in his chest that had persisted all through dinner, and the card games that had followed, was more obvious now, lying here in the dark with Fjord lying too-still and too-quiet on the other side of the bed, still pretending to sleep. Somehow, knowing it wasn’t his didn’t make the feeling go away. And he couldn’t help it, any more than he could bring Yasha’s Zuala back for her and make her happy that way.</p><p>When, he wondered, had he started counting Caleb alongside Yasha? This hadn’t been either of their choice, and if Jester’s god came down tomorrow and declared it had all been a dreadful mistake, here, have a divorce, Molly would consider it an unmitigated relief...and probably still at least try to help Caleb see that there was a place for him here, however little he might want to believe in it.</p><p>A fool’s errand, if ever there was one, but maybe a fool worth being.</p><p>Morning came, and for perhaps the first time since they’d started rooming together, Fjord decided to sleep in late. Apparently Seiyr and Phryne had helped him work out more stress than Molly had thought. He didn’t rouse until breakfast came in, carried by a skinny halfling girl in a spotless uniform. Molly gave her a platinum piece for the delivery, just to watch her eyes go round, and helped himself to rolls and chocolate before Fjord could roll out of bed to claim the pot of coffee that had also been sent up.</p><p>They regrouped in Beau, Jester and Yasha’s room, the seven of them, to talk it over. Personally, Molly was in favour of getting the hell out of the Marrow Valley before conscription started. Plenty of tieflings in the Righteous Brand, probably some of them even liked it, but it wasn’t a life for him. Caleb wanted a day to see his library, and honestly after the price he’d paid to do it, that was more than fair, but if they weren’t out of here by nightfall, Molly didn’t expect they’d get another chance.</p><p>The news had spread overnight. Zadash was grey and drear and full of tension, the air full of the feeling of a city waiting for the besiegers to come into view, for all that the front was still many miles away to the east, in the one direction they’d agreed they <em> weren’t </em>going. Caleb, Nott and Beau split off at the gates of the Tri-Spire, making for the Cobalt Soul and its library, Molly expected, but on the walk across to Dolan and Horris’ place it seemed like there were soldiers everywhere. Saying goodbye to their families, picking up provisions, marching in neat lines to form up over by the Signet Wall. The carnival atmosphere of last night had faded away almost entirely, and Molly was getting the feeling that they really should’ve just taken everything they had to hand and run for it last night, before the news got out.</p><p>Well, the best time to run had been last night, but the second-best time was right now or, failing that, whenever the others got back to them. They’d had one near-miss at the King’s Hall Taskboard already, when the Lawmaster called them in, and Molly had been pretty sure that would be it, and they’d have to get out of the whole Empire in a hurry before anyone got it into their heads to hunt them down as deserters to an army they’d never wanted to join in the first place. It turned out, all she’d wanted was to offer them an Imperial contract operating out of Zadash, filling in for all those soldiers of the Righteous Brand who were going to be off fighting in the east instead of tramping around the Empire finding travelling carnivals to harass and slaying the occasional monster. Molly still wasn’t sure how the Victory Pit thing showed they were loyal to anything except the promise of a large payout at the end of it, but he’d long since given up understanding the way most officials’ minds worked.</p><p>They managed to weasel their way out of that one pretty quickly - thank the Moonweaver, or whatever gods were paying attention, that Fjord didn’t seem any keener on the idea of soldiering for the Empire than Molly was, that had been a surprising relief - before hurrying back to the Leaky Tap to collect their things and clear out before anyone <em> else </em>came looking for the winners of last night’s Victory Pit.</p><p>Molly wasn’t going to breathe easily again, though, until they’d left Zadash in their dust.</p><p>They hadn’t left much at the Leaky Tap - just a few of their packs that nobody had wanted to take along to a festival, including Jester’s screaming-pink haversack. Their horses hadn’t yet been confiscated by the Righteous Brand for the war effort, though that, too, was probably only a matter of time. So, that was the positives. </p><p>On the downside, none of them had actually stopped to think about what would happen to an already-pretty-rotten manticore head over the course of almost two weeks in Zadash. It had smelled pretty bad when they got into the city, but now the thing was starting to test even Molly’s stomach, and he could tolerate quite a lot where gore was concerned. The flesh was sloughing off the skull in great sheets, and there were fat white maggots writhing in the mostly-empty eye sockets.</p><p>Fjord gagged at the sight of it, and Jester looked like she might be actually, physically sick, which left it to Yasha and Molly to heave the thing off the cart, sweep out any maggots that had fallen into the cart itself, and finally deposit the skull, maggots and all, in an alley behind the stables for somebody else to worry about.</p><p>When they got back, Jester was in the cart, scrabbling through her haversack with a determined air. She looked up when they came back in, and waved a hand, nearly overbalancing with the force of it.</p><p>“Hey, you guys! I never used my fate thingy yesterday because I’m stupid. Did you guys want to use it today?”</p><p>“...you mean that thing you and Caleb were looking at the other night?” Fjord asked, frowning at the haversack.</p><p>“Yes! I don’t know if you were listening when Caleb explained it all, but…”</p><p>“No, no, I was listening,” Fjord said quickly. “Uh...how dangerous is this thing? Only Molly was freaking out down in the taproom…”</p><p>“‘Freaking out’ is a bit of a strong way to put it,” Molly lied. “I just thought it was about to blow up and kill us all.”</p><p>In fact, he hadn’t known what the feeling had been. It hadn’t hurt, exactly. It had just been...weird. Caleb’s presence in the bond flickering strangely, and Molly had thought- Well, it didn’t matter what Molly had thought. Caleb had been fine, happily engaged in scientific enquiry, and he’d received a well-deserved ribbing from the rest of the Nein as they’d trooped back down to the taproom.</p><p>“...that something that might happen?” Fjord asked Jester, eyeing the glowing grey dodecahedron with something close to panic.</p><p>“No, nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head. “It gives you this- okay, well you focus on it and you go to this place and you can see it and there’s this little gray ball and it goes ‘Touch me!’ and then you go ‘Okay!’ Then it comes out, and it goes in your chest, and you get control of your fate for one time in a day.”</p><p>“Wow,” Fjord muttered.</p><p>Yasha gave Jester an odd look. “What- What do you mean, you get control of your fate?”</p><p>Jester shrugged, and waved a hand. “Well, like, basically like if you fuck up or something like that then you get to, like, fix it, maybe.”</p><p>An odd, distant look came over Yasha’s face, and Molly knew, without needing to ask, what she was thinking of.</p><p>“Can you go back and-?”</p><p>“I...don’t think it works like that, Yash,” Molly said, a little sadly. Not that he had any way to be sure, but if it had...then maybe Caleb would already have done what he was looking for. Not as though he had a shortage of fuck-ups he wanted to fix, even if it was debatable how many of them were actually <em> his </em>.</p><p>“No,” Jester agreed. “It’s just kind of...like all of a sudden you feel a little lucky, maybe.”<br/>Yasha paused, chewing on her lip, then looked over at Fjord. “Do you want to try it?”</p><p>“Yeah, sure. Why not?”</p><p>They had to head back into the inn and down into the cellar with the skeleton for that, and from the outside, Molly had to say, it didn’t look nearly as frightening as it had <em> felt </em>, that night at the inn. Fjord just...sort of sat there, one hand on the dodecahedron, until suddenly he blinked.</p><p>“You didn’t say anything,” Jester said accusingly, as he came out of it.</p><p>Fjord blinked, first at her and then at the dodecahedron. “Was I- Was I supposed to say something?”</p><p>Jester was already shaking her head. “No, it’s just when Caleb did it, he was like ‘I love you, Mom and Dad’, and then he started crying.”</p><p>The really irritating thing, Molly reflected distantly, about being able to tell, now, when it was Caleb feeling something and when it was him, was that it meant he couldn’t blame the way something in his chest twisted at that on anyone but himself.</p><p>As it turned out, Fjord did not actually feel like he had control over his fate after groping an unfamiliar artefact. It didn’t take much longer, after that, to get the cart all loaded up with everything, and arrange to come and pick it up in an hour or so once the rest of their party turned up.</p><p>They were halfway to Pumat’s when he felt it. A sudden, gleeful rush of satisfaction and exhilaration, the sort of emotion he’d barely considered Caleb might be <em> capable </em>of, followed by an equally sudden sharp pang of disappointment. </p><p>Caleb, it seemed, had found what he’d been looking for.</p><p>Molly wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or not. <em> I want to bend reality to my will, </em> Caleb had said.</p><p>His tail lashed of its own accord, nearly catching Yasha in the back of the knees.</p><p>“Sorry,” he said hurriedly, twitching it away and trying to keep it still - a much harder task than anyone without a tail could ever properly appreciate - “It’s just...I cannot even tell you what it is just.”</p><p>“We’re all afraid,” Yasha said quietly, looking around at the graveyard atmosphere of Zadash on the first day of war.<br/>Yasha had more reason to be than most of them, even. Being conscripted into the army was the sort of thing you could, with difficulty, run away from. If Ikithon got it into his head that she was a spy...after Caleb’s story, Molly wasn’t sure there was anything that man would stop at.</p><p>“That man who talked to you the other night,” he said, pitching his voice low, for only Yasha to hear. “At the party…”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>“I found out who he is.” Molly grimaced. “He’s...pretty powerful. Thinking we should probably try and stay out of his way.”</p><p>Yasha blinked at him. “I...was planning to. Why, what’s this about?”</p><p>“...can’t tell you that.” Molly gave her an apologetic look. “I can’t...I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you. He just...seems like bad news.”</p><p>“I didn’t know you’d talked to him.”</p><p>“I didn’t.” Molly grimaced. “I know, it’s a bit of a stretch, and we’re leaving town anyway, so...I don’t know. Ignore me. There’s a war on, he’s probably got bigger things on his mind, just…” he shook his head.</p><p>“I thought he would. And we are leaving today, and it doesn’t sound as though he’s here all the time either, if we need to come back. Do you…” Yasha paused. “Did you...remember something?”</p><p>“No,” Molly said quickly. “Nothing like that. Just...something someone said. I can’t tell you who.”</p><p>“...okay.”</p><p>And now he was keeping secrets from Yasha too. He gave her a one-armed hug, as best he could without stopping, and felt her squeeze back, just on the edge of two hard, before letting go.</p><p>It was another hour before the other half of their party got there, time enough to grab lunch from one of the few food stands in the Pentamarket that was still doing business - some kind of shepherd’s pie with spices that Molly had never tried before - and for Molly to read Jester’s fortune again, and then Fjord and Yasha’s, just to fill in time as Caleb pried himself - or was pried, going by the annoyance and disappointment Molly could feel from his end - out of the library. If Molly closed his eyes - which he didn’t, and wasn’t going to do, because he was in the middle of a reading and, anyway, it wasn’t like he wanted the automatic ability to spy on Caleb wherever he was - he’d probably be able to pinpoint exactly where he was in the Innerstead Sprawl beyond simply ‘on his way to them’.</p><p>As luck would have it, they reached the Invulnerable Vagrant around the same time. Less fortunately, the place had already been so thoroughly cleaned out that it looked like it had been set upon by a plague of unusually tidy locusts. There was still paper, though, and a few magical artefacts that the crown either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t thought worth the expense for common soldiers. And crossbow bolts, so apparently they weren’t buying everything up, or else just hadn’t considered the question of ammunition yet. The Crown’s loss.</p><p>Another of the Crown’s losses, thank all the gods, was them. Or at least, their services. It had seemed like a narrow thing for a while there, but it seemed like the rest of the group agreed that being permanent Imperial conscripts was not a future that held any promise. They’d given Orentha their politest refusal, and luckily she wasn’t the sort of official who got pushy or held grudges about hearing the word ‘no’. That was rare, and nice to see.</p><p>Unfortunately, that was about where their luck had run out, as they’d run into a military parade on the way back, and then into Kara.</p><p>It seemed that the Gentleman wanted to see them.</p><p>Molly could think of several thousand things he would rather do than head back down into the Evening Nip, especially if there was any chance of another run-in with Cree. They should’ve left town overnight, if the gates were open, or as soon as the gates opened this morning if they weren’t. Unfortunately, ‘should’ didn’t get them anywhere, so here they were. In the Evening Nip. Not on their way out of Zadash. Possibly about to be recruited for yet another job that might require them to stay in this city and possibly have the lawmaster or someone even higher up the chain decide not to take ‘no’ for an answer.</p><p>There was a fighting ring set up when they got down to the tavern proper, and though Molly cast a wary eye over the crowd, he couldn’t see a black-furred tabaxi anywhere in the tavern, even in the shadowier corners that might’ve hidden her from observers who couldn’t see in the dark. The two fighters in the ring were a lot more recognisable - Thed, the halfling from the sewers who narrowly avoided being eaten by a giant spider, and Louis, one of the group who’d run away from Siff Duthar’s research facility. So far, it looked like Thed was winning.</p><p>Nott nudged him in the side. “I got three gold on Thed.”<br/>Molly considered this, looking out over the crowd. “Seems a little late for a wager at this point.”</p><p>“Just you and me.”</p><p>“...fair. I’m in.”</p><p>Granted, that meant he was three gold poorer inside about five minutes, but since he was currently rolling in more gold than he’d seen in all of his very short life, Molly wasn’t especially inclined to mourn it.</p><p>He was a bit sorrier about the five gold he wagered on Jester, just because he didn’t like to see Beau win at things, but fair was fair, and that Inflict Wounds spell had been a thing of beauty and a joy forever.</p><p>“Friends, come, sit!” the Gentleman called from the far corner, once the fighting was over and the circle was starting to break up, and just as Molly was paying up his five gold to a delightedly grinning Nott. “And thank you for such a fine display of sportsmanship.”</p><p>There really was no other choice, then, but to go and sit down. Which was to say, they could go and sit down willingly or they could be prodded at rifle-point, and while neither option was exactly appealing right now, only one was likely to end with them getting shot.</p><p>“That’s us,” Fjord said uneasily as they settled in one long row on the bench on the nearer side of the Gentleman’s table. “Always down for a scrap.”</p><p>“Apparently.” He was his familiar slightly oily self - frilled shirtsleeves, extravagant assortment of rings and all. To be fair, they were nice rings. Molly might’ve considered lifting a few, if it wouldn’t be more than his head was worth to try and if he’d ever had any talent for pickpocketing. He laced his hands together in front of him, mirroring the Gentleman, just to remove the temptation. “Thank you for coming so quickly.”</p><p>“Of course,” said Fjord, filling in his role as party spokesperson. “It didn’t seem like our options above ground were all that plentiful. We were...more than anxious to hear what you might offer.”</p><p>The Gentleman smirked. “Rather tenuous times these are, wouldn’t you say? Word is the breach of the Ashguard Garrison was a massacre, and now the skies there hang dark with ill-magic. I’m glad that’s hundreds of miles from here, though. Now with the bulk of the military moving east, and the Crownsguard stretched thin, we should begin bolstering our plots, yes?”</p><p>Fjord looked faintly confused.. “...oh.”</p><p>“What does that mean?” Nott asked, leaning in a bit closer, lamp-like eyes wide.</p><p>The Gentleman spread his hands on the table in front of him. “Well, a distracted empire is an easy empire to bend to our will. Or at least to not pay attention to what we’re doing.”</p><p>“...indeed,” Fjord said nervously. “I assume it doesn’t mean over- overthrowing it. More manipulating it to your individual game.”</p><p>“Not that we’re opposed to either,” Molly chimed in.</p><p>Or- Actually playing a major role in seeing the Empire torn down wasn’t something he was overwhelmingly interested in. A minor role, though, and from a distance, might not be so bad.</p><p>“...that’s a hell of a lot to commit us to,” Beau said, glaring at him.</p><p>Molly shrugged. “I’m just saying, we’re open to options here. Not much love for the Empire to go around.”</p><p>“Oh-” the Gentleman waved a dismissive hand before lacing his fingers back together and steepling them in the fashion of a stage tyrant - Molly had seen a few at close hand, and knew where the Gentleman was getting his playbook from - “I have no interest in political endeavours. Just the more confused they are, the better for business.” He gave a low, rolling chuckle, also straight out of one of Gustav’s more understated stage villains.</p><p>As it turned out, they needn’t have worried about losing the purse from the lawmaster. Seven thousand gold wasn’t <em> as </em> much, but it was still a truly ludicrous amount of money, and it came <em> without </em>the Imperial collar around all of their necks. Two jobs, one in the Labenda Swamp and one up north by Shadycreek Run, where he’d dragged himself out of the grave two years ago, and where the carnival had got its start. Neither of them sounded too complicated, although saying that out loud was probably going to get them jinxed. Find one toothless, one-eyed smuggler, assist with undisclosed local troubles for a friend of the Gentleman’s. It would doubtless get more complicated once they were out there, but from this vantage it sounded remarkably straightforward.</p><p>Honestly, at this point anything that got them out of town until people had sort of halfway forgotten about the Victory Pit sounded good to Molly. It took them through Hupperdook, so Jester was on board, and Caleb seemed to have found everything he’d wanted in the Cobalt Soul library, because he was, apparently, entirely over Zadash, and keen to check on how Horris was doing on their way north.</p><p>Molly expected they’d get into more trouble along the way than they were accounting for. Really, he was almost looking forward to it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Okay. Here is the not-hyper-on-coffee repost of chapter 10. Still an awkward transitional chapter that only covers part of one episode, but hopefully it's okay anyway.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Berleben was, to put it kindly, a bit of a dump. It was, to put it unkindly, a complete shithole, and this was coming from Caleb, whose standards for accommodation were not precisely high at the best of times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The village was a decent size - almost a small town, really - and built, the parts of it he could see, mostly in wood. One spark would set the whole place alight, if only it could find fuel dry enough to catch. That did not seem overwhelmingly likely. Even here, in the prosperous centre of town, the streets were a clear three inches deep in bog water, with only a few scattered cobbles and slabs of stone to mark the streets out, the cart’s wheels and their horses’ hooves throwing up more water to either side as they went. Some of the larger, better-kept houses were built on short stilts, which elevated them a little way out of the muck, but even those were sinking. Soon, the swamp would claim them too. Caleb was all too aware of how many eyes were on them - it seemed as though the people of Berleben were not at all used to strangers, and he swore he recognised one of the Crownsguard from the gate, following them at a not-nearly-as-discreet-as-he-thought-it-was distance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They could not know to expect them. Probably they reacted this way to any outsider passing through this miserable, half-sunken little town, almost the size of Blumenthal but with none of its charm. All the same, the guilty thing that passed for Caleb’s conscience shrank, just a little, from the sight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Next to him, in the back of the cart, Kiri was staring around with every indication of honest enthralment, her little taloned claws scritching gently at Frumpkin’s ears. Caleb reached over to gently tug the hood of her borrowed cloak up and over her face. It didn’t quite work - there was no disguising that long beak - but like this, it could probably pass for a mask, an eccentricity, and not cause for the locals to drive them out of town for harbouring a monster. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There, now,” he said in a low voice. “This is- Is not so bad. Who knows, maybe your parents have- have passed through here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kiri made a low, sad chirping noise. It was a slim hope, Caleb had to admit. They had been running from ‘swamp folk’ in the first place, and gods alone knew what they had meant to do to Kiri and her family. Still, it was the only hope they could offer her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Excuse me!” Jester called out from up ahead, where she was sitting next to Molly at the driver’s bench, “</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cart rolled to a stop for a second, and Caleb heard low, croaking voice voice reply:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What d’you want?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lovely weather we’re having, huh!” Jester said brightly, and Caleb hauled himself up to peer over the side of the cart, to where someone...a woman, he thought, though it was hard to tell from this distance, shrouded as they were in a long grey cloak, was peering up at Jester, sitting atop the driver’s bench.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Weather’s shit!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester paused. “Okay! Um. I was wondering if you could point us towards an inn? Or the Keystone Pub, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Keystone Pub’s in the Puddles, that way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look for the crooked tower thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you sleep there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, you can. I wouldn’t be caught dead there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here,” Beau cut in, “Here’s some pocket bacon for your trouble.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman spluttered: “What the fuck is pocket bacon?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You seem like you’d appreciate that more than money, so I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’m very confused, but I’ll take it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cart ruddered back into motion again, turning in the direction Caleb presumed the old woman had pointed, if only because it didn’t make much sense for them to be going any other way. Not that her description had been exactly encouraging, but it was where they were supposed to be meeting this Febron character, at least, which seemed to make it the place to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The further into the city they went, the clearer it became that the whole town was sinking, slowly but surely, into the mud, not even the remnants of cobbles now to show where was street and where was private land, or what passed for it, out here in the swamp. It was, at least, no mystery why the woman from before had called this part of town the Puddles. The houses here were stone, not wood, huts and hovels, mostly, thick with moss and fungus and caked with algae where the water lapped against their walls. There was a strong smell in the air, of cooking and woodsmoke and the green rot of the swamp, and the low, persistent buzz of insects, just at the edge of hearing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once, Caleb thought, someone had clearly poured quite a lot of money into Berleben - that someone had bothered to quarry and haul stone was proof enough of that, and even most of the hovels had the remnants of fine carvings or tiled roofs given over to moss and fungi, where thatch might’ve been cheaper. They had to navigate at one point around a ruined fountain in what had once clearly been the town’s central square. He thought he felt the flare of a Mending cantrip from Jester, but if she had cast it, but if she had, it didn’t seem to have any effect, the fountain fallen in on itself, ruined beyond repair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seemed a very desolate place to try and make a life.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk, it had to be said, didn’t seem to agree with him. Caleb could feel his excitement sparking and bubbling from here, where Mollymauk was sat at the driver’s bench, trying to guide the horses through the mire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh my gosh, you guys, there it is!” Jester called out, and Caleb leaned out over the side of the cart to look.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was, indeed, a small, crooked tower, maybe two storeys high now, and fallen in, that had then been haphazardly built over with whatever masonry the proprietors could get their hands on, long rope ladders hanging down from the upper level between a pair of dimly glowing oil lamps that burned with the rank, animal stench of tallow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Looks like this is us,” Fjord said, reining in his horse. “...uh...you think there’s a stable or anything?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can ask at the bar,” Jester suggested, peering around. “Hey, where’s Beau? Guys? Has anyone seen Beau?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “I expect she’ll come back when she gets hungry. Are we going in?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s go up there!” Jester agreed, almost bouncing in place, then paused. “Should somebody stay with the cart, maybe? Because I feel like maybe all our awesome stuff we just got will be taken.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What stuff?” Nott demanded. “You mean-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This leather that we took!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-bloody crocodile skins?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We have a beautiful piece of leather,” Molly agreed. “We also have some fine tapestries, we have a safe, we have many things.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, Caleb can put his string around it,” Nott said quickly, nudging Caleb in the side. Obediently, he fumbled for the thread in his pocket, and began stringing it around the edges of the cart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Someone probably ought to stay with the horses, too,” Yasha put in, sounding faintly worried. “They...they might not get stolen, but they might wander off, and if they take the cart with them…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good point,” Fjord agreed. “You want to stay down here and do that?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Yasha’s eyes flicked nervously from side to side. “...I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. If you see Beau, tell her we’re up there, okay?” Jester added, waving a hand up towards the archway at the top of the rope ladders, as Kiri sprang up to her feet, still clutching Frumpkin in her arms like a stuffed toy and made towards the ropes. Jester caught her gently by the shoulder. “No- No, Kiri, stay, like, behind me a little bit, okay? Don’t, like, make yourself obvious, all right?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“All right,” Kiri chirped back, in Jester’s own voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We need to protect you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Protect.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Caleb felt a curl of something dark and apprehensive in the pit of his stomach. How could they protect her? Kiri, knife or no knife, was just a little girl. Perhaps not the toddler she would be in human terms, but far too young to get into the sort of scrapes the Nein seemed to invite. And now, they were taking her into the sort of inn that the locals here would rather die than sleep at. This was not an excellent string of decisions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re going- We’re bringing her into the bar?” Nott asked, sounding every bit as dubious about this as Caleb felt - although, admittedly, they weren’t terribly long on alternatives right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had to admit, he hadn’t thought they needed to discuss not giving the small bird child alcohol, and he wasn’t sure if this place would even do a Tirley Shemple - it certainly looked like more of an ale and hard liquor sort of establishment - but Jester did have a point that they couldn’t just leave her, and whatever else the bar might hold, Kiri was probably at much less risk of being driven out of town or killed as a monster by more of the swamp folk who had hunted her family if she was with them. Beau rejoined them mid-argument, and together, the seven of them made their way up the ladders, and into the inn.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside, the Keystone Pub was much smaller than it looked on the outside, made smaller by the addition of a half-constructed stage in the corner. The taproom was close and cramped, either built in or panelled with dark wood, all crooked angles and low beams, with the only light coming from more dim tallow oil lamps behind the bar that filled the whole small room with the smell of rendered fat and cheap liquor. Caleb hastily revised his estimation down. He was quite certain that not only would they not serve a Tirley Shemple here for Kiri, but that anyone who attempted to ask for one would probably be rendered into lamp-oil.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He considered asking for one anyway, but they did have a job to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barkeep was a middle-aged gnomish man who looked far too cheerful to be in a town like this one, with heavy sideburns and a puff of black hair that made him look like a dandelion on the verge of telling the time, who looked up from the drink he was pouring to grin toothily at the Nein, thus showing himself not to be the man they had been sent to find.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey! Welcome to the Keystone Pub! Oldest pub in the, uh, Labenda! Well- Well, the oldest pub in the Labenda is beneath this, one, but! We rebuilt it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s really cool,” Jester said bluntly, peering around through the dimness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stunning,” Mollymauk agreed, with truly breathtaking sincerity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you very much! Glad you could make it! Where are you all from?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was, Caleb reflected, as the whole group tried to pass off the job of answering that question to anyone else, a reason why he hadn’t decided to find a place like this and bury himself in it until even he had forgotten his own name. Namely, shitty little backwater towns hoarded gossip like treasure, having nothing else worth hoarding. Probably everything about them would be free for the asking to anyone who showed an interest by sundown.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All over the place, really,” he extemporised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alfield,” Nott added, her eyes flicking along the bar nervously.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barkeep nodded. “Alfield! That’s a bit of a journey, isn’t it? Well, glad you could make it! Not many folks come that far over here to visit the swamp!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb could not begin to imagine why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what’s your name, good sir?” Beau asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gnome beamed at her. Was he always this cheerful? It seemed like it must be at least a little exhausting. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> am Dent Bonswallow!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He’s a little bit high right now,” he heard Jester mutter to Nott. Well, it was probably an attempt at a mutter, anyway. Probably half the bar had heard it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bon or Barn, or…” Caleb asked, hopefully before Dent could hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dent </span>
  <em>
    <span>Bon</span>
  </em>
  <span>swallow,” Dent repeated, as Jester disappeared off into the rest of the taproom, presumably to add further dick-related graffiti to the overhead beams. “So, what can I get you guys? What you asking for? What you looking for?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>‘Tell us where to find this shady local smuggler’ really didn’t seem like the right answer to give, now that they’d established that wasn’t him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s your strongest drink?” Beau asked, leaning her elbows on the bar to peer at the barrels in the back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh- That would be the, uh, Labenda Throat Grog.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau blinked at him. “What- What is- What-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Labenda Throat Grog,” Dent repeated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yeah. That.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Burns you like a fucker,” Dent said, sounding far too pleased about that for anyone’s good.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bender Throat Grog?” Beau repeated, her nose wrinkling a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Labenda</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The swamp you’re in. Same colour as the swamp. Burns your throat. Tastes like grog. That’s where it got its name.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau squinted at him. “What do you mean, same colour as the swamp? Green and shitty?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That sounds exciting,” Molly said, and he was even being truthful about it. “I think we need a round.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent nodded. “A round for everyone? You too?” he added, pointing to Kiri.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, she’s- she’s on the...on the wagon,” Nott said quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“On the wagon!” Kiri echoed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...right. Weird. Uh- That’s gonna be- ba-ba-ba-</span>
  <em>
    <span>ba</span>
  </em>
  <span>- Put you back about,” he sucked on his teeth. “Twenty-five copper pieces?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Both Caleb and Beau reached for their coin purses at once, saw each other, and after a quick game of boulder-parchment-shears, Caleb paid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The grog was, as promised, a decidedly murky shade of green, and gave off eye-searing fumes that could probably get a person drunk all on their own.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What brings you to town?” Dent asked eagerly, slopping out more thick, sludge-green liquor into mugs, and producing a mug of mostly-white, probably-good-enough milk for Kiri. At least, Caleb had probably drunk worse. Not even just in the last five years. “What brings you so far north from Alfield?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, well, we just heard, like, amazing things about this area,” Jester said, a bit too brightly, swirling her mug. “And we thought, you know, we would check it out, because, you know, you don’t get many travellers up here, and that’s sort of what you want when you’re on your honeymoon, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb could’ve groaned. Mollymauk made a noise like a cat whose tail had been trodden on, his frustration scraping against Caleb’s mind like the rasp of metal against stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, you’re on your honeymoon, are you?” Dent said, setting the jug down and beaming around at them. “Congratulations! Uh, all of you, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pretty much all of us, yeah,” Molly lied, catching Caleb’s eye as Jester pouted behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, not those two,” Fjord added, gesturing at Nott and Kiri. “They’re...uh…our kids now, I guess. Stepkids, anyhow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Emphasis on the </span>
  <em>
    <span>step</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Nott muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent nodded again. “Well, congratulations. We can do you a discount on rooms, if you want the bridal suite?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have a bridal suite?” Beau asked, glancing around the taproom.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah!” Dent said, pointing down. “Well, we can call it a bridal suite. Driest room in the house. Not much call for that sort of thing ‘round here in the Sog Sticks.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...the Sog Sticks?” Mollymauk repeated, raising his eyebrows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent shrugged. “It’s a shithole,” he admitted. “But it’s our shithole, and you won’t find better accommodation in town on a budget than you will right here at the Keystone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Downstairs?” Jester asked, almost bouncing in place on her stool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester actually bounced a little at that. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Whoa</span>
  </em>
  <span>! That could be so much fun!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it haunted?” Beau asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“D’you like things that are haunted?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Yes!” she and Mollymauk said at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s haunted!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt the little thrill of glee through the bond, even knowing they were being lied to, and shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it underwater?” Jester was asking now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja,” Caleb added, “And...I do not wish to question your hospitality, but we are- there are rather a lot of us, and, you know, probably one of us will need to be in with the girls anyway, but do you have any...would there be any beds large enough for six, or will we need to take separate bedrooms?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Nowhere </span>
  </em>
  <span>had beds big enough for six. An actual polycule that size would need to save up and get a bed made specially, or just put a few double beds together and call it done. And, if they did, by some miracle, either have a bed that size or enough beds to put together, Caleb would be quite happy to share with Nott and Kiri and no-one else for the duration of their stay here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent paused, looking them over. “Six of you?” he repeated.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Our...uh...other wife is outside with the horses,” Beau said awkwardly, and Caleb didn’t think he was imagining her ears going faintly pinkish.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...right. Well, we’ve, uh, we’ve got a few double beds we can push together for you, or, you know, if you don’t mind splitting up for the night, we’ve got four good rooms just waiting for occupants - price is the same either way. As for the other thing...everything’s cleared out down there, everything that fell in, we cleared out, and we have subterranean rooms.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Whoa,” Jester whispered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m very excited by this,” Mollymauk agreed. “How many rooms do you have?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“And are they below the water level,” Caleb added quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Four,” Dent admitted baldly. “And most of them aren’t, no, but there’s a few if you like it a wee bit soggy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord was trying to stealthily draw away from the bar now, and Caleb shifted along a bit with the others to try and cover it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How much are they apiece?” Molly was asking now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The answer turned out to be a silver piece per person each night, which seemed rather inflated, given that, if they had really committed to the ‘polycule’ story, it would’ve been the same price for two rooms or four. On the other hand, looking at it from that perspective, they were at least saving money not having to pay extra for more rooms.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was even a stable in the Midway Docks where they could keep the cart and horses, so that was one less thing to worry about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll just...go tell Yasha,” Beau said awkwardly after a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell me what?” Caleb looked around, startled. But, no, there Yasha was, having once again managed to soundlessly appear behind them. Even Fjord, over by the door, looked a little confused by that one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau coughed. “There’s a, uh, a stable, up towards the Midway Docks?” she said awkwardly. “So we can get the horses settled. Uh- Where are the horses, anyway?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha gestured back the way she’d come. “There was a hitching post outside. I didn’t notice until after you’d left. So...have you found him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Found who?” Dent asked, grinning widely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh- Uh-” Beau started. “We kinda heard about a kooky regular here, we just have to meet him…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he is an...an old family friend,” Caleb agreed, the words tasting a little like ash on his tongue. “You might know him - Febron Keynes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent squinted at them “Didn’t know old Febron had any friends.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This one’s...a bit distant,” Mollymauk lied. “Any idea where to find him? It’s just...it’ll be nice to catch up with him again, I was just wee the last time I saw him...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Dent huffed out a breath and put up his hands. “I wasn’t going to ask! He’s over there.” He pointed. “Left of the stage where it looks like he passed out, probably in his own piss, most likely.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked and yes, just past where a small crew of workers - either inn employees or hired specifically for this purpose - were trying to erect a small, crude stage, a man was passed out. His mouth was open in sleep - no teeth, just as the Gentleman had said, and though it was hard to tell the eyes from here, he fit the rest of the description well enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Febron was, as it turned out, even more viscerally unpleasant than the Gentleman had described - he’d mentioned the teeth and the eye, but not the personality - but willing enough, with a little ungentle persuasion and a considerable bribe, to take them to this safe-house in the morning. Of course, it turned out there was something horrible living in the safe house, but with their track record they really should have expected it. About the only things they knew about this creature were that it howled, that it was clever enough to want to leave corpses out as a warning, and that it wasn’t a gator, but they’d worked on less information than that before and come out ahead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, more-or-less ahead, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With no serious loss of life and limb, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Look, it hadn’t been </span>
  <em>
    <span>their </span>
  </em>
  <span>fault that the Kryn Dynasty had chosen that night to attack the Zauber Spire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, that had been without reckoning on the fact that Febron was shifty enough that they’d have to keep him with them until they got to this safehouse and back, or for that matter the discovery that Molly apparently slept naked which was...none of Caleb’s business, really, no matter how persistent the mental image.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester and Nott headed out to take their cart to the stables, while the rest of them stayed behind to keep an eye on Febron, since none of them trusted him far enough to believe that he wouldn’t decide suddenly that he valued his own skin more than the hundred gold they were paying him and run off into some even deeper hole than this one, if such a thing could be found. It was not the  most comfortable afternoon Caleb had passed, even with more of Siff Duthar’s journal to go through, and it was something of a relief when Jester and Nott returned, and they could head down into the possibly-haunted, somewhat-waterlogged, almost-certainly-overpriced lower level of the inn to sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The way down to the rooms was down a dark hatch in the far corner of the inn, which Dent had to point out to them with a lantern. The base of the tower was dark and dank and windowless, lit by more dim lanterns and full of the smells of wet wool and fur and rank tallow. There was a narrow hallway, with four crooked doors, and Caleb couldn’t help the reminiscent prickle up the back of his neck. He’d been in too many prison cells for this place not to feel at least a little familiar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Time to snuggle up, Beau!” Jester sang out gleefully, earning a double-take from Febron and something that Beau would probably punch him for referring to as a giggle from her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s do it!” she agreed, grinning at Jester.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord looked around, rubbing idly at his mouth. “Who’s taking Kiri?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester blinked. “Oh, Kiri’s staying with us. You want to come, Nott?” she added, with a wide, bright, beaming smile that was impossible to say ‘no’ to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh…” Nott glanced around. “I...uh, I thought I’d be in with Caleb tonight…I mean, I usually am…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester pouted. “Aw. But we were going to braid each other’s hair and everything. It’ll be just like a sleepover - did you- do you know about sleepovers?” she added, her eyes going wide. “Like, from what you’ve said it doesn’t seem like goblins have them all that often…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have...heard of sleepovers,” Nott hedged, which Caleb was almost certain was some kind of lie.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“They’re super fun!” Jester jumped in. “I mean, I never got to have one back in Nicodranas because, you know, what with Mama’s work and all there wasn’t really anyone to have them with. Mama would sleep in my room sometimes, if I asked her, but that doesn’t really count, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was chewing on her lip now. “So, there’s four rooms,” she said slowly. “And we get all of them. One is Yasha and the weirdo…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Me and Jester are taking that one,” Beau butted in, pointing at a door apparently random. “And...uh...apparently Nott and Kiri, I guess.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You and Kiri are only little, so it won’t be that tight a fit,” Jester said brightly, still smiling at Nott.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I mean, I guess…” Nott glanced up at Caleb. “You will...you will be all right on your own, won’t you? I won’t go if you’re not…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will be fine, Nott,” Caleb promised. “Unless you do not want to go, in which case we will be fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I mean...I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>want to…” Nott trailed off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great!” Jester said, clapping her hands together. “Ohmygod this is going to be so much fun, you guys!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh,” Fjord cleared his throat. “We do kinda have a job to do in the morning…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, yeah, we know.” Beau rolled her eyes. “Come on. Uh, Yasha, you sure you’ll be all right with…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha blinked. “...yes, I am very sure I can take him,” she said, shooting a sideways look at Febron. “He doesn’t seem all that dangerous.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau blinked, and Caleb didn’t think he was imagining the little hitch in her breathing. “...okay. Well, uh, yell if he tries anything anyway?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will, thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great, so that’s settled,” Fjord said. “Uh, Caleb? Can I talk to you for a second?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at him, as the rest of the Nein disappeared into various rooms. “Er...sure. Of course. What- What did you want to talk about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord shuffled his feet. It was hard to tell in the dim lamplight, but Caleb thought there was a darker greenish tinge to his cheeks “‘bout the other night, uh...I know you two probably meant to do something nice, and I appreciate that…” This was news to Caleb, who didn’t know that Fjord had even been paying attention to what Caleb had been doing on almost any other night that hadn’t involved fighting for their lives. Was this about the Modern Literature con? “But the next time you and Molly want a bit of, uh, </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone time</span>
  </em>
  <span>, you don’t have to get another room and send in the...uh...ladies and gentlemen of the night as a distraction. I’d’ve gone in with the girls if you’d just told me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I will remember that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord looked a little relieved at that. “I get that it’s very new,” he said, in a conciliatory sort of tone. “And maybe you don’t want to be too public about it, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb stared at him. “...Fjord,” he said slowly. “Are you...do you believe that I am sleeping with Mollymauk?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord squinted at him. “...but you got that extra room, back at the Pillow Trove, and that was before they even got there. I just figured-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I got that.” Caleb shifted. “But, you know, even if we were, this is hardly the- the place or time for, ah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>alone time</span>
  </em>
  <span>, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I get that. Just...next time…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There isn’t going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>be </span>
  </em>
  <span>a ‘next time’! We are- This is- Molly was in with you at the Pillow Trove that night!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean…” Fjord coughed. “Eventually, yeah. I’m not...what you two do in private is your own business…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb stared fixedly past Fjord’s shoulder. “...I should very much like not to be having this conversation right now,” he said, more to himself than Fjord.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yeah, you and me both,” Fjord muttered. “So...uh...good talk? I guess I’ll see you in the morning?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh- Ja,” Caleb said awkwardly, looking around for a convenient door. Which ones were occupied again? He was sure he’d seen something… “I...goodnight, Fjord.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Night,” Fjord said, sounding every bit as relieved as Caleb felt that this conversation was now over. “I’ll just…” he made a vague gesture at the closest door, before going in, and shutting the door firmly behind him, which at least narrowed down Caleb’s choice of rooms a little, as did the giggling coming from the opposite door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thankfully, he did not end up stumbling in on Yasha and Febron. Rather less thankfully, the only other room had Mollymauk in it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Caleb considered turning around and asking if he could share Fjord’s room, except-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except, that while of course Nott was entitled to a night to herself every now and again, without having to constantly worry about whether Caleb was happy or afraid or having some kind of crisis...he didn’t want to be alone in this place. It wasn’t a matter of safety - anything that came through that door, he was quite confident he could survive, even if the building didn’t - but...he had spent too much time alone in windowless rooms. Enough that he ought to be easy with it by now, but somehow he had never quite managed to get past the instinctive terror that, this time, the door would stay locked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was sitting on the bed with his back to Caleb, and seemed to be unlacing his long boots, his extravagant coat thrown carelessly over the bedcovers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not that I don’t trust this place, or like it,” Molly said without looking around, making Caleb jump a little. “But I’m thinking about locking the door a little more heavily than normal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb swallowed. “That...is probably a good idea, yes,” he agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s head whipped around so fast Caleb had to blink away the afterimage of flying purple curls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- Oh. I was expecting Fjord.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “I...he’s in the other room, if you would like me to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, no, this is fine,  just wasn’t expecting it.” Molly’s tail whisked across the bed. “Do you have any more of that silver thread on you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt in his pockets before remembering. “Ah- Nein. Nein. It is still on the cart.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay.” Molly got up, his left boot unlaced and flapping at every step, drawing one of his sabres before jamming it under the door. “It’s a lot of new people today,” he said with a little grimace, shrugging at Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yes, I had- had noticed.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“I don’t like new people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you don’t?” Caleb wouldn’t have guessed that, from how eagerly Mollymauk seemed to seek them out. Relatively speaking, after all, the Nein themselves were new people to him, all except Yasha, and he appeared to have taken to them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not when they’re sneaking into my room at night, no. Well, not unless it’s under </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>specific circumstances.” He waggled his eyebrows, and Caleb looked away, his face burning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes- Ah- I- I do not care for them much either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve lucked out,” Mollymauk went on, “This is one of the drier rooms. Do you want the bed, the floor, or are we sharing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...er…” Molly, Caleb’s traitor brain reminded him, slept naked. “...I will be fine on the floor, thank you, Mollymauk,” he managed, trying to blink away the vivid mental image of lavender skin and brilliantly-coloured tattoos, and the furnace heat of Molly’s body so close that a braver man than Caleb might be able to reach out and touch it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Suit yourself! Think there’s a couple of extra blankets on here, if you want to make up a pallet or something.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that would be- I would appreciate that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was only one extra blanket, in fact, but Caleb had bedded down in worse places by far than this, and with the chill coming up from the ground, he wasn’t going to turn his nose up at anything at all that might keep him that bit warmer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d chosen to wedge himself in the farthest corner from the door, to sit up and read through as much of Siff Duthar’s journal as he could get through by the dim and flickering light of the solitary lamp hanging from a hook on one of the beams, trying not to stare as Mollymauk took out his jewellery.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seemed rather an involved process, to Caleb’s inexpert eye, each piece painstakingly removed, wiped with a cloth from one of the many inside pockets of that ludicrous coat, and wrapped in another long piece of cloth from yet another pocket, which looked as though it had once been a rather nice scarf, before it had been relegated to this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t often have time to do this on the road,” Molly said after a moment, out of nowhere, and Caleb startled as he realised that he’d been caught. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dragged his eyes away to stare fixedly at his book, feeling the blush that had subsided creeping back up his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” Mollymauk amended, “Not since Trostenwald, anyway. The circus moved about much as we do, but we had </span>
  <em>
    <span>tents</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Most of this isn’t particularly good metal,” he added, as if Caleb had asked a question. “And you get problems with rust or mould if you aren’t careful with it. I keep meaning to buy something a bit more hard-wearing, but we had to get out of Zadash before I could find any jewellers that did horn ornaments.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb gave a noncommittal little hum, to indicate that, while he was listening, he was doing something else right now, and, contrary to popular belief, had better things to concentrate on than the sight of Molly reaching up to slide the horn-bracelets down and around the curves of his curling horns, the movement of his shoulders under a thin linen shirt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb swallowed, and tried to refocus on the text, but Siff Duthar’s ramblings about the coming war, the horror that would sweep out of Ghor Dranas and the various graphically-described terrible fates of all in its path weren’t quite holding his attention tonight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly, it had to be said, chattered on quite unaffected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-and - I’m pretty sure we discussed this, but if we did, I wasn’t paying attention, what is the plan here?” Mollymauk was saying now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked up, startled. Divested of coat and jewellery Mollymauk looked...different. Younger, maybe, but somehow no less overwhelming for it. Caleb could still see the places where the kohl he’d put on that last morning in Zadash had smudged halfway down his face before being rubbed off, the faint shimmer of gold still clinging to his eyelids.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a moment to process what Mollymauk had said, and when he did it was almost a relief - this, at least, was a question he could answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I, er, I believe Febron is to escort us to this...this safehouse of the Gentleman’s,” he began. “Where we are, um, expected to deal with whatever this...howling, apparently intelligent non-alligator creature is that has been disrupting business, and-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- No, not that plan, I mean…” Mollymauk’s tail lashed as he set the scarf containing the last of his jewellery aside. “You know who I mean. The...small bird child. What exactly are we going to do with her? Because we’ve had her a day, and so far things have gone fine, but we both know, sooner or later, we’re going to get into another fight and then what’s going to happen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. In truth, he hadn’t thought about it much. Leaving Kiri alone hadn’t seemed like the thing to do, and honestly her chances had seemed better with them than without them, alone in the swamp with people after her. They’d been too late, it seemed, for her sisters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I do not think there is a- a plan, exactly,” he admitted. “Though Fjord or Jester might have something in mind. Perhaps we can reunite her with her parents?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think they’re still alive somewhere?” Mollymauk asked, just faintly dubious. “I mean...we did find what looked like all their kids in various stages of death by crocodile-”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Alligator,” Caleb corrected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly blinked. “...those aren’t the same thing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nein. It is a- a common mistake,” Caleb added - he’d thought the same until he was about seven, neither alligators nor crocodiles having been common enough in the vicinity of Blumenthal for the distinction to really matter that much - “But they are...there is a difference in the teeth and the shape of the snout, I think? Or is it- This is not something I have studied in any depth…” he admitted. “I think you find crocodiles in saltwater and alligators in freshwater, but that is...it has been a very long time since I thought about any of this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think I’ve </span>
  <em>
    <span>ever </span>
  </em>
  <span>thought about any of this,” Mollymauk said, an edge of laughter in his voice that faded as he went on. “But- Look, I’m willing to accept that they felt they had to leave one kid to save the others. It’s shitty, but their whole situation was shitty, and sometimes you have to just save who you can. Leaving all of them, though? Either they’re dead or they left their kids to die, and either way, that doesn’t sound great.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb...couldn’t really argue the logic of that one. He had been an only child, himself, born late in life to a couple who had all but given up on any hope of children, and had always been rather made much of, in consequence. All the same...it was impossible to imagine Leofric and Una Ermendrud leaving any child of theirs to die, and Caleb had deserved it far more than Kiri ever could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...that may be true, but what are our alternatives?” he asked, looking over at Mollymauk on the bed. His jewellery put aside, Mollymauk was fidgeting with his tarot cards again. Caleb hoped he wasn’t about to offer a reading. “She is...she became our responsibility when we brought her with us, we cannot just- cannot simply abandon her now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know.” Mollymauk rubbed his face with one hand. “But one way or another, she’s not going to be with us for long. I’d rather it be the way that </span>
  <em>
    <span>doesn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>end with any more dead kids.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked back to his book. He couldn’t argue with that, either. Kiri was a sweet little thing, but she was a four-year-old child and...even without the imminent threat of death, the Nein were no fit guardians for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That may be true,” he admitted. “But I do not- At the moment, I don’t see what there is that we can do about it. The ‘swamp folk’ who came after her family are very likely just the locals here, we can hardly leave her to them, and it is...life on the street is not very much safer than staying with us would be.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fewer monsters, admittedly, but a hard winter could kill just as easily, and at least Caleb was reasonably sure that they would try and protect Kiri as long as they could.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk grimaced. “I’m not hearing any good options here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not know that we have any. We are...so far as I know,” Caleb amended. “We are improvising. Which...you know, we do have a better track record with improvisation than we do with actual planning so far.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you do have a point.” Mollymauk reached over to his coat, and, after some fumbling that produced a small pouch stitched all over with costume gems, a little pot of kohl, a striated crystal and a stray card from his fortune-telling deck, retrieved a pencil. “Were you planning to go to bed early, or can we keep the lamps on for a bit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...it might be advisable to do that anyway,” Caleb pointed out. “Since - I do not think we have anything to light it with in the morning, and my fire spells are…er...not exactly a- a precision instrument.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rubbed awkwardly at his arms, wishing he hadn’t had to admit to that. Because it had been, once. Trent had not accepted sloppiness. Bren could light a candle at fifty paces without singing the papers on the desk beside it, and sear off each individual fingernail from a man’s hand while Astrid questioned them under truth spells without taking the whole hand. Caleb...ever since he left the asylum, his magic had come wilder, and the precision he had once prided himself on felt as though it might be beyond him forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shot a glance up at the lantern. “...good point. Hope you’re not one of those people who can’t sleep anywhere that’s too bright.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb gave a mirthless huff of laughter. “Oh- You know. I have...I have slept in far worse places than this. And it is dry! That is more than I was expecting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt a faint twinge through the bond at that, and could’ve kicked himself. The last thing he wanted or deserved was Mollymauk’s pity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He still didn’t quite know where he stood with Mollymauk. He hadn’t even before that last night at the Pillow Trove, and if he had been uncertain then, it was nothing to the confusion he felt now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of all of them, now, that knew the secret, it had been Mollymauk he had dreaded telling most, and also the one who had had most right to know, from the start. Nott, after all, was still free to leave him, and though Caleb was grateful - unimaginably, unspeakably grateful, so pathetically glad of her that he had not even tried to argue against her wholly unearned conviction that his crimes were anyone’s fault but his own - that she had not, the fact remained that should she ever decide that she neither needed nor wanted an incurably fucked-up ex-Volstrucker in her corner, she could leave Caleb behind without a backwards glance. Beauregard, too...it had been a transaction, nothing more, a secret of his for something only she could do for him, and if she had decided to drive him out or tell the rest of their party, there would really be nothing he could do about it. Mollymauk...couldn’t. Even if he had tried, even if he had told the rest of the Nein, driven Caleb from their company and fled to Tal’Dorei or Marquet or the Nine Hells for all Caleb knew, they could not escape each other, no matter how much they might want to. He had told Nott for friendship, Beauregard as payment, and Mollymauk out of simple obligation. He had not expected understanding - what would Mollymauk know of Caleb’s kind of guilt, of having done something for which no amends could be made? He had been awake and aware only two years, and in those two years found more joy than Caleb had in thirty, what would he know of regret?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps he had not found understanding. He wished, though, that he had some word for what it was he had found instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk hadn’t tried to pretend Caleb’s crimes were any less serious, any less monstrous that they had been, or that they were anyone’s fault but his own. Trent may have given the order, but it was Bren who had gone to him, after that brief visit home, to tell him what he thought he had heard. It had been Bren who decided to put the Empire, his ambitions, his hopes of Trent’s favour above everything his parents had ever done for him, everything he knew of them, and signed their death warrants in doing it. Did it matter that he had broken, when asked to carry out the sentence himself, when he had set the whole thing in motion days or weeks before, and felt so certain, all that time, that he was righteous? There had been no pretence, either, that Caleb could ever make amends by ordinary means, that there was even anyone left to whom amends might be made. Perhaps he had not understood the way Beauregard had, that it was not enough simply to go on with his life without them, that some- some redress had to be made, even if it seemed impossible, even if Caleb did not know where to begin, even if no amount of work or study could earn him redemption. All the same, it was more than Caleb had hoped for or expected, and now he had it, he had not the least idea what it was he was supposed to do with it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure you don’t want to come up here?” Molly asked, looking down from atop the bed. “Your virtue’s safe with me, I promise. And the light’s better up here, if you want to read for a bit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb hunched a little deeper into his coat. “I am fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt surreal enough, to be sitting here with Mollymauk, Caleb reading and Mollymauk...apparently drawing on one of his tarot cards, though Caleb couldn’t make out much from here and, he reminded himself sharply, had better things to do than watch Molly draw anyway. He hadn’t shared a room with anyone but Nott since his Academy days, unless he’d had a cellmate at some point during the years he didn’t remember. He’d grown used to their shared routines, even when Nott slipped out to satisfy her itch in the middle of the night, used to her slight weight curled up against his side and the conversations they’d have, sometimes, in the dark. If he had had siblings, as he had always wanted, it might’ve felt something like that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was something else again. There was a peculiar feeling to sitting in a room with his technical spouse, getting ready for bed and making idle conversation, even knowing that there had been no ceremony, no vows, nothing but an accident of phrasing on the part of some enchanter somewhere, that none of this meant...anything, really, except that Caleb had been brought up a particular way, and sometimes found it hard to stop applying the rules of that life to this new one, even when it made no real sense to do so. And, in all honesty, Caleb didn’t trust himself in a bed with Mollymauk, even knowing that this had not been Mollymauk’s choice, and that he suffered from none of the wistful delusions of a conventional upbringing and the most tenuous, not even a legal fiction, connection to a beautiful person who had only ever meant to be kind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was too great a chance that Caleb would do something foolish, say something foolish, and put Mollymauk in the position of having to refuse a man he now knew to be a trained killer, with no compunctions about murdering even those he claimed to love best.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was, in fact, too bright to sleep. Caleb ended up camping out under the bed, inching his way into the darkness just in case Mollymauk noticed, and got the wrong idea. It was dim and close and cramped under there, in the soothing way that tight spaces often were, so long as they felt like hiding-places rather than cells. He might’ve been in any number of inns, or back under the cart, or curled up behind a stack of boxes in a warehouse somewhere.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was easier to sleep here than it had been in that luxurious bed at the Pillow Trove, with the stone floor cold beneath his back and a slow ache building in all his limbs. He’d hardly slept at all last night in Zadash, his sleep troubled by the old nightmare of firelight gleaming off crystal, his parents’ screams echoing through Trent’s country house, as Bren, heedless, transcribed another list of the names of traitors under Master Ikithon’s approving eye. The beds hadn’t helped, so large and so soft that it had felt like he was sinking into it, and might never pull himself free.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know what time it was, when he jolted awake to Nott’s voice in his ear through the wire. The oil in the lamp had burnt down, not quite all the way, but enough that their faint hopes of still having a light to see by in the morning had been entirely dashed. On balance, they should probably have just risked using a fire spell to light it again in the morning, but it was a bit late for that sort of worry now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The conversation that followed was just more proof, if he needed it, that he would never deserve Nott’s friendship.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was beginning to have a sense, now, for why Nott was so insistent that it wasn’t his fault, that it hadn’t been him, really, who had done these things. Nott, who had been a torturer’s assistant, who had hated the work and won information with kindness rather than cruelty. That, too, was part of the process - Caleb hadn’t had the heart to tell her that, that after the torturer’s ministrations, her sympathy would’ve been just another tool for her clan to use, and all the more effective for being genuine. And she- she had hated that life, she’d said as much herself. Bren had embraced it. Had been good at it, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>proud </span>
  </em>
  <span>of being good at it, right up until it was his own loved ones burning, and suddenly it mattered to him, when it never had before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was a poor choice of surrogate onto which to project her hopes for redemption - as if Nott needed any such thing, whatever role her clan had tried to force her into - but he was, it seemed, the one that Nott had chosen, and he- He couldn’t disappoint her. Not after everything she had done for him, not when she still clung to him so tightly, and maybe she didn’t need his protection anymore, but for some reason she still wanted him nearby. It would hurt, when she finally realised he had been irredeemable, all this time, but he could not make himself bring that moment any closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was half-ashamed to realise that he never had asked where or what Nott had come from. Jester had, just a few days ago on the cart, but Caleb never had. And maybe in the beginning he had had the excuse of not wanting to invite return questions, but now...well, that last night in Zadash had quite put paid to that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had never stopped to consider that Nott might not have a family, or even the memory of one, that she had left her clan behind to get away from that life of scavenging and fleeing and hiding, because she’d been too good a person to kill someone she cared about, even with everything she’d ever known telling her she had to. That was the truest difference between them, in the end, torturer’s assistant or no, because Caleb had done that work willingly and eagerly, until it cost him too much, and Nott had broken away the very first chance she got, even knowing that she couldn’t even go back to see how the friend she’d done it for was doing, because his own community would murder her, just for being who and what she was. Nott the Brave, indeed, and no amount of accidental baby-eating would lower that opinion of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stared up at the underside of the mattress, trying not to listen to Mollymauk’s soft, snuffling snores, the quiet sounds of him shifting in his sleep. Trying not to picture him sprawled out across the whole bed, the covers half-kicked off despite the chill in the air, putting all those elaborate tattoos on full display.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Du bist erbärmlich</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he hissed at himself in the dark. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Wie könnte er dich wollen?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What did it matter either way? Caleb had greater concerns. And, if he succeeded, who knew if he, this version of himself, would still be here? It was entirely possible that, in achieving what he dreamed of, he would unmake himself, and count that a fair price to pay. Perhaps that was the best possible outcome, even, except that he still didn’t know how it could be achieved, or what the consequences would be once it was done, except that, whatever they were, they would have to be better than this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But whatever that new world looked like, there was no place for Caleb Widogast there.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>You know the drill - sadly filler-y, mostly useful for setting up developments later on and also I wanted to riff on this episode a bit.<br/>Unfortunately, I need a couple of chapters' breathing room before I really kick the plot into high gear, and I'm so sick of the sight of this chapter by now that I'm posting it against my better judgement.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Molly woke up, not for the first time, underground and in the dark. Already, the day was not getting off to a great start. Whoever it was that had decided underground, windowless bedrooms were a good idea, they were an absolute fucking arsehole and he hoped that someone punched them very hard in the dick. If anyone could point him in the right direction, he’d happily do the job himself.</p><p>...unless they were also the person making breakfast, that was, in which case he might swallow the slow creeping dread of waking up in a dark, cramped space and go with it, so long as breakfast was really, <em> really </em>good.</p><p>There was no sign of Caleb, even with darkvision, and the sound of footsteps and voices in the hallway. Probably morning, then, but even if it wasn’t, Molly needed fresh air too much to be picky. He rolled over, buried his face in the pillow, and reached down over the edge of the bed, groping around for his pack, and a clean set of smallclothes. Instead, his hand found something soft and faintly greasy, strands of it, and Molly frowned and lifted his head to peer over the edge of the bed and see what it was he’d caught ahold of.</p><p>Caleb looked much younger in sleep. Closer to the...what, twenty, twenty-five years he’d actually lived than the thirty-odd his body had been in the world for. The lines of stress and worry on his thin face all smoothed out, his body lax, lying there like a puppet with its strings cut and Molly’s hand buried in his hair - fading back, now, to the dull red-brown it had appeared when Molly first met him in Trostenwald, and not the bright coppery colour it revealed itself as when clean. He’d rolled out from under the blanket Molly had offered, sometime in the night, sleeping fully-dressed in his coat and boots with his book-harness just visible where the coat had fallen open.</p><p>It was, Molly realised with a sharp, startling little pang, perhaps the first time he’d seen Caleb’s face untouched by grief.</p><p>He pulled his hand away, and stretched for his pack, feeling around blind until silk dragged against his fingers, and didn’t look at Caleb again until he was shrugging on his coat - rather the worse for wear after yesterday, Molly really had to talk one of their spellcasters into learning that prestidigitation spell, and even then he was pretty sure there would always be a watermark - and heard Caleb stirring behind him.</p><p>“Morning!” he said brightly, spinning around to face his- his <em> unexpected roommate </em>.</p><p>“...was? Nott- Oh.” Caleb sat up slowly, knuckling at his eyes. “<em> Hallo </em> , Mollymauk,” he said in a sleep-roughened voice, and Molly’s tail curled happily entirely of its own accord. “Ah- <em> Guten Morgen </em>.”</p><p>“Gluten moorhen,” Molly chirped back, just to see Caleb grimace. “Breakfast? I could go for something cooked, could you go for something cooked?”</p><p>“...so long as it is not alligator,” Caleb muttered, still blinking sleepily around. It was- Not adorable. Not remotely. Dammit, <em> Caleb </em>was not allowed to be able to pull off ‘cute’ when he didn’t even work at it.</p><p>Molly blinked as the words hit him. “...now I want to try alligator. Do you think we’re going to run into any more of them, or do you think they do it here, or…”</p><p>“Why…” Caleb yawned, a hand over his mouth, one arm stretching above his head, his whole long back arching. “You might- might have mentioned this yesterday, when we had alligators aplenty.”</p><p>“I didn’t know you could <em> eat </em> it! Wait-” Molly squinted at him. “Have you <em> tried </em>-?”</p><p>“<em> Nein </em>. Though I have...have eaten a lot of things, many of which I- you know, I really probably should not have…” Caleb coughed. “We are wasting time here.”</p><p>With a snap of his fingers, Frumpkin materialised out of the ether, appearing midway through a stretch that seemed to double the length of the cat’s spine. Apparently it was true, that old saw about people’s pets coming to resemble them. Or maybe that was just a fey cat thing, what did Molly know?</p><p>Caleb reached up to scritch the cat’s ears, then shot another look at Molly. It was a look that said, without ever saying anything: <em> Why are you still here? Can I not be left to commune with my cat in peace? </em></p><p>Molly was used to barging in where he wasn’t wanted - Beau was right, he <em> had </em>used to do it for a living, but more than that...half the towns they’d passed through, he hadn’t been wanted before he’d so much as opened his mouth. People looked at the horns and the fangs and the eyes - the ones on his face and the ones everywhere else - and snatched children out of his way before he devoured them, no matter how many bright colours and cheerful patterns and wide, unthreatening smiles that didn’t show his teeth he covered himself with. If Molly had a problem with being unwanted he’d never get to go anywhere at all, so why was it suddenly bothering him now?</p><p>“...that’s...I’m going to go check on Yasha,” he said after a moment, and disappeared out of the door without waiting for a response.</p><p>He <em> did </em>want to check in with Yasha, because while she could probably break Febron’s scrawny neck in her sleep if he tried anything, they did sort-of need him, and Yash had a tendency to think things like that mattered more than she did, which was objectively wrong, but difficult to snap her out of sometimes. He found her up in the inn’s dingy taproom, which offered only barely more air than the rooms downstairs did, but which was, at least, above-ground.</p><p>“He give you any trouble?” he asked, nodding at where Febron was standing a few paces away, with a hopeful sort of leering grin on his face that made Molly really, really wish they weren’t obliged to spend any more time with him.<br/>Yasha shrugged. “He was watching me sleep when I woke up,” she admitted. “I’d have woken up if he did more.”</p><p>Molly hissed a breath. “Asshole. That’s...why couldn’t we’ve put him in with Fjord?”</p><p>“Because that wasn’t who he chose to share with.” Yasha shrugged, apparently unruffled. “He is...revolting...”</p><p>“He <em> is </em>,” Molly agreed.</p><p>Febron butted in: “You know, I can hear you-”</p><p>“<em> Good </em>!”</p><p>“...but I can deal with him.”</p><p>“You shouldn’t <em> have </em>to,” Molly muttered.</p><p>Yasha touched his elbow. “I dealt with worse at the carnival. You know, since it was my job to get rid of worse there.”</p><p>Molly paused. “...you know, there’s nothing stopping us from <em> leaving </em>him in the swamp once we know where we’re going?” he offered.</p><p>“Who are we leaving in the swamp?” Jester asked, sticking her head out of the hatch behind them.</p><p>“Nobody! Nobody is leaving me in that swamp! I won’t come if you’re just going to leave me!”</p><p>“No-one is going to leave you behind, Febron,” Jester said, far more patiently than Febron warranted, so far as Molly was concerned. “We need you to get <em> out </em>of the swamp too.”</p><p>Febron visibly relaxed. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”</p><p>It took a while for them all to come up, and then it turned out that it’d be another hour before breakfast was ready. Which, on the one hand, boded well for the prospect of that breakfast being <em> cooked </em>- the Pillow Trove had been wonderful and luxurious and all those other things, but rolls and hot chocolate weren’t Molly’s idea of a substantial breakfast for the road - but, on the other, still left the Nein...and, he supposed, Febron...with the question of what they were going to do for an hour waiting around before they could get going.</p><p>Fortunately, the arrival of someone else looking to claim their table decided that one pretty fast. Rather less fortunately, that still wasn’t enough to ward said someone off.</p><p>“This table is taken by the Mighty Nein,” Jester called out, as the cloaked and hooded figure - there was always something at least a little suspicious about cloaked and hooded figures - drew closer. “But, you know, if you need anything,” she added, more slowly. “There’s other tables.”</p><p>The voice that came under the hood, however, was perhaps the least sinister thing Molly had ever heard in his life.</p><p>“Oh- Uh- Yeah. Hi, um, I...actually, I- I kind of-” they broke off, and huddled a little deeper into their cloak, and Molly caught a glimpse of long black hair and a slit-pupiled yellow eye for a moment before the cloak shifted again to reveal a young half-elven woman with a pale, anxious face. “I’m- I’m really sorry to bother you guys, just- Um. I couldn’t help but overhear some conversation you had last- Er, I’m sorry to be really forward. Are you heading into the swamp today?”</p><p>“You were listening in to our conversations?” Beau interrupted, narrowing her eyes, her fingers already closing around the haft of her staff.</p><p>“Not- Not on purpose,” the woman said quickly, “Just- I- I’m really desperate to find a way into the swamp and- and you were talking <em> really </em>loudly. Um. Congratulations, by the way, on your wedding, but it seemed like you weren’t just here for a honeymoon, so if I wouldn’t be intruding-”</p><p>Beau blinked. “That’s accurate, probably.”</p><p>“I like your ribbons!” Jester cut in, beaming at the newcomer. </p><p>Molly squinted at her. “Were we really being that loud?” He hadn’t thought they were being particularly noisy. Then again, this was a quiet tavern. Not counting the Nein there were about three people in here right now, and all right, it was morning, but there hadn’t been many more patrons here last night. Which was kind of a shame because, unfortunately underground accommodations aside, this was probably the most interesting tavern just as a building that Molly had ever been in, and it deserved a clientele to match.</p><p>“Thank you. Oh- You’re <em> blue </em>!”</p><p>Well, that was...not an answer to anything he’d said. Also...yes, Jester was blue. Molly was purple, which you saw a lot less often, but most people still didn’t just come up to him and point it out. It was assumed that he had <em> noticed </em>that he was purple, and thus didn’t need regular reminders, was what Molly was getting at here.</p><p>“You’re not!” Jester retorted, sounding...maybe just the faintest bit annoyed.</p><p>“No- Um. No, I mean, <em> you’re so cute! </em>” she paused, and then glanced around nervously at the rest of them. “Um…not that I...I’m not...not trying to…of course you’re committed to one another and I wouldn’t get in the way of that…it- it must be very nice, for you,” she added, looking at them with one great, guileless green eye. “To have each other.”</p><p>“It’s going pretty well so far,” Molly agreed blandly, not bothering to hide his grin.</p><p>“If you don’t mind us asking,” Fjord added, before the newcomer could reply. “Why are you heading into the swamp yourself?”</p><p>The newcomer looked cagey. “Oh. Er. Well, it’s- it’s kind of a long story, just-”</p><p>“Oh, well, we have an hour,” Caleb pointed out, curiosity flickering against Molly’s mind like a flame. He couldn’t say he wasn’t curious either, come to think of it, if she was up for sharing her reasons. If she wasn’t...well, nor was he, particularly. Not as though it would cost them anything to have one more person along - they were already bringing Febron along, after all, and it was hard to think of anyone who could annoy them <em> more </em>, whether they needed him or not.</p><p>“It’s also a bit of a- Well, I mean- You guys haven’t been hired by any creepy people in dragon masks, have you? You don’t- You don’t know anyone like that?”</p><p>Molly actually had to think back.</p><p>“...I mean, not for several years for a different reason,” Beau said slowly, looking around at the rest of them.</p><p>“Definitely a long time since I’ve dealt with anyone in a dragon mask,” Molly agreed. And, technically, that had been Ornna anyway, since her fire-fans were pretty great if they wanted to stage anything with a dragon in it - the Fire Fairy angle might be her usual routine, but sometimes there was an Embertide festival or something that the circus would be performing for, and people wanted <em> dragons </em>.</p><p>“I’ve never seen anyone in a dragon mask before,” Jester agreed.</p><p>“Wasn’t that creepy,” Molly added, to be fair on Ornna.</p><p>Nott was nodding. “We’ve been hired by creepy people, but not by- Oh, so I’m wearing a mask,” she added, “But that is a different kind of mask, or- or- it’s not a dragon mask.”</p><p>“Same kind of creepy, though,” Beau put in.<br/>The woman bit her lip, and as she turned her head, Molly thought he saw a gleam of dark scales from underneath her hair.</p><p>“...hired...all of you?” she asked, a little shyly. “I mean, aren’t you...you seem awfully young to be getting - I wouldn’t have asked if you hadn’t been talking yesterday like this was a bit more than a family holiday…your kids are adorable, by the way,” she added, and held out a hand to Kiri. “Hello?”</p><p>“Hello?” Kiri echoed, taking her hand and giving it one firm little shake, like someone had taught her how. Who had that been, Molly wondered, and was irritated with himself for wondering. He barely knew Kiri, and that was, with any luck, the way things were going to stay until they found somewhere willing to take her in, because she couldn’t stay with the Nein forever. Staying with them even a few days was pushing it, with the sort of trouble they got into.</p><p>The look on the woman’s face was downright comical, wide eyes and mouth agape.</p><p>“She’s being you!” Nott explained helpfully.</p><p>Kiri gave a little whistle of agreement. This did not actually reduce the level of confusion in the conversation.</p><p>“Wha- The- But- Ohmygod,” she whispered, looking genuinely stunned as Kiri produced her dagger from the little belt-sheath someone had gotten her - Molly still wasn’t sure who, though the bright azure colour of the sash the sheath was strung on gave him some ideas - and brandished it with more enthusiasm than intent.</p><p>“No, no,” Jester caught her arm and tugged Kiri back, just gently. “Probably not so much like that.”</p><p>Their newcomer was nearly glowing now. “Wow. I’ve never seen a bird like that before, that could talk. And- and she’s your daughter? I mean...they’re both your daughters?”</p><p>“Adopted,” Beau said baldly, because she was an utter <em> menace </em>who didn’t see that this was just going to make it even harder when the time came to part ways, and that was assuming Kiri even survived that long. “We’re...uh...still getting used to the blended family thing.”</p><p>“Oh- Oh, right. You- You said this was very new - I really am so sorry to be barging in on your honeymoon like this. I mean, I know it’s kind of a working holiday, but…”</p><p>“I mean, it couldn’t really be a traditional honeymoon anyway, what with the...uh...the kids along,” Fjord said awkwardly, and yes, that was <em> definitely </em>a dark green blush rising across his face, just talking about the idea. Molly caught Jester’s eye and grinned at her, raising his eyebrows a little, just to see her smirk impishly back. “And we would- We would like to help you, if you’ll tell us what you need that help with.”</p><p>The woman coloured, the pointed tip of the scaleless ear going pink. “Yes- Er, sorry, I got distracted from what you asked me there for a moment. I- That happens sometimes. Just- give me a nudge and I’ll get back on track. There’s something out in the swamp. There’s somewhere...um...like a smuggler’s holdout or like a storehouse, I think, maybe…”</p><p>“Hmm,” Jester said, slow in the way of an old wizard stroking his beard in one of Gustav’s plays. “Weird. That’s crazy.”</p><p>“That’s a weird thing to put in the middle of a swamp,” Molly agreed, catching her eye again. What were the odds that it was the same safehouse they were looking for? Granted, if you wanted to hide something, the middle of a swamp so dangerous that people actually tolerated Febron because he could guide them there and back sounded pretty ideal. On the other hand, the swamp was only so large, and since they were looking for a safehouse in the swamp anyway, they might as well look together.</p><p><em> What </em>she needed was a slightly more complicated question, but whatever this bowl was, the Gentleman hadn’t specifically mentioned it, and if he wanted it anyway...well, it wasn’t as if they couldn’t just say that whatever had wrecked the place had destroyed or taken it...or just that it had been taken, if they were worried about lying. She seemed to be being honest enough, and far be it from Molly to make a fuss about other people’s religious relics.</p><p>He could feel Caleb’s suspicion, though, like an itch beneath the skin, and his eyes had never left her, even as his fingers petted idly at Frumpkin’s ears and chin, apparently without his conscious direction.</p><p>“All right, so you’re looking for a...<em> bowl </em>,” Beau said, crossing her arms like she was preparing to shake down a patron who didn’t want to pay up for his ticket. “A dangerous bowl.”</p><p>“A soup bowl used in rituals,” Jester added, just to clarify things a bit more.</p><p>“Yeah.” </p><p>“You don’t want to get it in the wrong hands...because-”</p><p>“Of people in dragon masks,” Molly finished for her. </p><p>Fjord was rubbing at his mouth with his knuckles, or maybe just resting them there, against his lips. Hard to tell, from this vantage. “Do you think they’re sending people to get it there before you?” he asked.</p><p>“I don’t- I love your jewellery, by the way,” the newcomer added, turning to Molly with wide, appreciative eyes. “It’s really nice!”</p><p>Molly preened a little. He couldn’t help it. It was, in fact, quite excellent jewellery, and <em> someone </em>might as well notice it.</p><p>“Thank you,” he said, smiling and trying not to show off too many of his fangs. “I’ve picked everything out myself. This is all...all put together…”</p><p>Most of it was costume jewellery, admittedly, but it wasn’t as though half the people he’d ever met had been able to tell the difference, at least so long as he kept it clean.</p><p>Jester reached up to flick a fingernail against one of the caps on his horns as he was talking, with a soft little ringing noise of keratin against brass. Molly may or may not have leaned into it, just a little. It had been a long time since anyone touched his horns for any reason but to lead him around under certain very specific and usually enjoyable circumstances, it was nice.</p><p>“Also,” Caleb cut in, still watching their new acquaintance - at this point, Molly was almost willing to upgrade her all the way to ‘friend’ - with narrowed eyes. “Why- Why do these people want the bowl that you're talking about?”</p><p>“They’re…” she broke off, her eyes flickering nervously from one face to the next until they finally came to rest, once again, on Molly. Or rather, on Molly’s necklace, the little silver-plated pewter shape of the Platinum Dragon on its thin chain. “Are- Are you a worshipper of the Platinum Dragon, by any chance?”</p><p>“Sure,” Molly lied.</p><p>She brightened. “Well, if your husband- Er- Wife? Er...spouse...I am so sorry, I know it’s rude to ask-”</p><p>Molly waved a hand. “I’ll answer to any of them.”</p><p>“...right. But if you’re all married to somebody who’s a worshipper of the Platinum Dragon, I guess I can trust you.”</p><p>“Oh, good for us,” Fjord said, as Molly tried desperately to remember what the precepts of the Platinum Dragon actually were. Something, something, honour and justice...something else smite evil....something, something, just order…</p><p>“He’s incredibly trustworthy, and he worships like crazy,” Jester agreed, leaning up and over to press a chaste kiss against Molly’s cheek, “We actually had to have the ceremony at a Platinum Dragon temple…”</p><p>“I didn’t hear the rest of you coming up with any alternative suggestions!” Molly said, feigning annoyance, and maybe slightly overplaying the role. “It was a beautiful ceremony,” he added. “Lots of…” What was involved in a Platinum Dragon wedding ceremony again? “...dragon-y things…”</p><p>Further along, Caleb gave an explosive cough that might’ve been cover for a laugh. It would be nice, Molly thought, to hear him laugh openly, untainted by bitterness or pain.</p><p>Thankfully, their new friend didn’t seem to notice, because her whole thin face lit up. Well, the half of it Molly could see did, anyway. </p><p>“Oh, that’s-” she coloured. “I mean...I already said congratulations, didn’t I, but…” she bit her lip.</p><p>“Remind you to show you my tapestries,” Molly put in, unable to resist a faint smirk. The tapestry was still mostly clean, as he remembered.</p><p>“Okay!” She was actually beaming now, nodding enthusiastically, making her yet <em> another </em>person who could pull off ‘cute’ in the face of all logic, reason and fairness.</p><p>“Is that code for something?” Fjord asked, squinting at him.</p><p>Molly let his smirk widen into something almost predatory. “If it is, you’ll be the first to know. Dear,” he added, just to watch Fjord splutter, because sometimes he made things far, far too easy.</p><p>“Just don’t touch them,” Beau put in, leaning across the table.</p><p>The newcomer blinked. “...why?”</p><p>Jester leaned in, dropping her voice to a low and confiding whisper. “Because he's had them wrapped around his weenie.”</p><p>“Like- Oh my goodn- Uh- Well- Um-”</p><p>“She’s high on sugar, don’t listen to her,” Molly said quickly. The <em> last </em>thing he needed now was to get hauled up for blasphemy by a small-town idolmaster. </p><p>The bowl, it turned out, was important to a cult of the Scaled Tyrant, which at least explained why she’d been so happy to learn he was allegedly a worshipper of the Platinum Dragon in particular. Molly couldn’t remember what the tenets of the Scaled Tyrant were either, if he’d ever known at all, but at least he was a bit less likely to be expected to live up to those so long as Cali, as their new acquaintance’s name turned out to be, was with them. Not that he’d been planning to make much of an effort for the Platinum Dragon either, but it was the principle of the thing.</p><p>They laid out the bare bones of what they were doing there...other than the not actually being married...well, mostly...some of them were not married. Most of them. It was a technical thing anyway. Anyway, they laid all that out over breakfast, which <em> was </em>cooked. Perhaps a little too much so, but it wasn’t as though they hadn’t all eaten worse by now. The Gentleman wanted them to get his safehouse back, but hadn’t said anything about bowls, cults or dragons of any kind. Cali wanted her bowl back, and didn’t particularly care about the Gentleman. It seemed like they could help each other, no matter how suspicious Caleb was, apparently just on the basis that anyone Frumpkin disliked was inherently untrustworthy.</p><p>“Cali, did you hear any howling in the swamp?” Jester asked, leaning in across the table. “Because we heard there were <em> howling </em>monsters.”</p><p>Cali ducked her head. “No, I didn’t really go that far deep in, with the gators and some shadows moving around. I know a little magic, but I’ve never fought before, so…”</p><p>“You’ve never fought?” Nott said incredulously over whatever Jester’s reply had been.</p><p>“No, I- I had a bit of a...um...reclused upbringing. I learned magic, I know a few spells, um, and I learned how to control it a bit. Um...draconic blood gives me some magic, but I’ve never been in a- a <em> real </em>fight before.”</p><p>Nott, never missing an opportunity to sing her apparently-pseudo-son’s praises - Molly really had got that dynamic way off in his first assessment - jumped in. “Caleb can teach you all about magic, he knows <em> all </em>the spells and he’s very, very wise.”</p><p>“Really?”<br/>“Yes!”</p><p>“You...you must admire him a great deal, then,” Cali said, with a shy, nervous sort of smile and a sideways look. “Is he teaching you?”</p><p>Nott paused. “...yes…” she admitted. “He’s very good at teaching.”<br/>Molly didn’t even need to look over at Caleb to know his ears had gone red. The embarrassment was plain enough through the bond, so overwhelming that Molly wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t blushing himself.</p><p>“Oh, wow. That’d be great - if you don’t mind sharing your stepdad with me, I mean.”</p><p>Fjord cleared his throat. “I don’t think we’re going to have time for that. If you’re going to join us, you’re going to have to work for your food, you understand?”</p><p>“I do, yeah- Yeah.”</p><p>“My name’s Fjord, by the way,” Fjord added, reminding anyone who hadn’t been paying attention that none of them had introduced themselves either. It went around the table, and Molly only had half an ear on the conversation when shock tore through him like being hit in the back with a bolt of fire in the split-second that Nott introduced herself.</p><p>He startled - he couldn’t quite help it, knocking the table and nearly knocking his mug of the morning’s watered ale off the edge entirely.</p><p>“Are you all right, Mister...I’m sorry, I still don’t know your name-”</p><p>“Molly,” he said distractedly. “And it’s...it’s nothing. I’m fine. Really.”</p><p>“Um...okay, Mr Molly. If you’re sure. I hope I didn’t- Didn’t say anything to offend you…”</p><p>Molly couldn’t say that she’d said anything at all, never mind anything that would offend him, other than asking for confirmation on Nott’s fake name.</p><p>“No, nothing like that. It’s just...something that happens sometimes. My leg seized up,” he lied, tilting his head to get a better look at Caleb, who was still staring fixedly at the back of Nott’s head.</p><p>“...you’ve never had problems with that before,” Beau said accusingly, leaning past Caleb to catch Molly’s eye.</p><p>Molly shrugged. “It comes and goes. Yash, do you want to…”</p><p>That at least got the introductions back in order, even if Molly couldn’t explain why Caleb had reacted that way to Nott’s chosen alias, and didn’t know if he wanted to ask. The last time Caleb had answered a personal question had been...a lot, both to listen to and to tell. Whatever significance the name ‘Bren’ had for him, that was his secret, to share or keep as he liked. Molly could appreciate that - it wasn’t as though he was in a hurry to share any details about the eyes, or the strange cold voice that must have been Lucien’s, always whispering in the back of his mind, or the dreams he’d had, in those early days when he’d been new, and woken up not even able to scream. He could barely remember them now, and that was the way Molly liked it, but this lot...they’d want to push. The best way to stop them pushing was to respect their secrets in return, and even that wasn’t a particularly sure thing - as witnessed by that Zone of Truth spell that Molly was still endeavouring to forgive them all for.</p><p>The conversation moved on, with Yasha’s fascination with Cali’s dragon powers, and her one black-scaled draconic claw, and Febron’s much less appreciated fascination with same, and by the time they were all through with their rubbery eggs and overcooked chunks of unidentifiable breakfast meet that might, for all Molly knew, have been alligator, they’d agreed on a plan. It was, admittedly, the same plan they’d had last night, which roughly consisted of: go into the swamp, try not to die, clear out safehouse, except with the addition of ‘find bowl’, which could be comfortably factored into the usual helping themselves to anything of value they found at the safehouse before leaving again. On the strict understanding, of course, that anything that indicated that she might be betraying them would probably be met with the sudden removal of at least one extremity, and that she’d give them her arcane-focus bracelet in exchange.</p><p>It was more than a little worrying that, after all that, Cali still seemed to want to tag along with them and even described them as ‘lovely’, which even Molly had to admit was a bit of a stretch for this party, just because they hadn’t attempted to attack her <em> yet </em>.</p><p>The swamp itself, once they got out in it, was green and brown and so foggy that the shapes of the waterlogged trees looming out of the mist seemed almost ghostly in the pale light of a late-autumn morning, the sun apparently as reluctant to creep up over the horizon as any sensible person would be to get out of bed on a biting cold morning like this one - and that from Molly, who didn’t normally mind early mornings, having known almost nothing else since he crawled out of the earth. At some point, Molly thought, he was going to need another coat. The one he had already was beautiful, of course, and easily the best thing to come out of his mania for learning how to sew and embroider, before he’d got started on making his own tarot cards, but it had been made for mild winters and warm summers, and Berleben in autumn was neither. Maybe he really <em> would </em>turn his new tapestry into one, and keep the benefit of people assuming he was fanatically, lawfully devout as well.</p><p>“Are we taking the cart or just going on foot?” Nott asked, poking with one toe at something that looked like a clump of earth, but bobbed and sank as she prodded it. The land and the water around here, Molly thought, really couldn’t decide which wanted to be which. No wonder the circus had never stopped in here - you’d need a raft just to set the tents up.</p><p>Febron made a noise that might’ve been a laugh or a phlegmy gargle. “Oh, I wouldn’t recommend taking that with us, no.”<br/>“We’ll leave it, it’ll be fine...uh...daughter…” Fjord said quickly.</p><p>“Sure, Papa,” Nott said, giving him a flat, sideways sort of look and not even troubling to change her voice. “Can I have my allowance now?”</p><p>Fjord paused. “...ask your mother,” he said after a moment.</p><p>“Mommy, can I have my allowance now?” Nott asked, in the single most overblown, falsely-cutesy tone Molly had ever heard in his life. Toya would’ve been embarrassed to try it, and by Nott’s best attempt at the sad-puppy eyes, which made her look like a pop-eyed bullfrog.</p><p>Beau, Jester and Molly all looked at one another.</p><p>“...uh…” Beau started.</p><p>“You know, in retrospect we really should’ve figured out who got what parent names <em> before </em>the wedding,” Molly said, playing to the crowd. “Uh...no opinions here, by the way.”</p><p>“I like ‘Mama’,” Jester offered. “And- Caleb, what’s the Zemnian word?”</p><p>Molly had expected the little squeeze of pain. He was almost used to it, by now, like the fist wrapped around Caleb’s heart had squeezed just a little tighter for a moment, like wringing the last juices out of a fruit already reduced to skin and pulp.</p><p>“We...er...we had a few terms,” he admitted. “<em> Vater </em> was- Was always the one we used, at home.”</p><p>“Okay, so you can be that, then,” Jester said, oblivious - and why shouldn’t she be, Molly reminded himself. Caleb’s general state of misery was such that, for someone who couldn’t feel it, nothing about him had changed at all. “Cali, do you know anything that isn’t, you know, gender-specific…”</p><p>“Oh, no. That is, I…” Cali coughed. “I...I didn’t know my parents. My guardians are...were great, really. Um, not the original set, but after I- I ended up being taken in by a dwarven couple, but they didn’t...I didn’t call them...so, you know, I can’t really…” she coughed. “It is...is nice you’re thinking of it, though,” she added. “I never...you never feel you can ask about these things, so…”</p><p>Nott, Molly thought, might’ve looked the slightest bit abashed about that. “...maybe they didn’t want to overstep?” she offered. “I mean, if they...you were with someone before that, right?”</p><p>“I...did I say that?” Cali looked, for a moment, almost hunted. “I- Um. Yes, yes, I was. It was...it wasn’t a great time. I mean...it felt like it, at first, but…” she huddled deeper into her cloak. “Let’s...let’s just get started- Is she supposed to be doing that?”</p><p>As they’d been talking, Kiri had got her dagger out, taking little practice swings at the fog as if it were something they could or should fight.</p><p>Well, ‘could’, anyway. Molly wasn’t sure she didn’t have a point about that second part.</p><p>Jester’s head snapped around. She was nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet as she cupped both hands over her mouth to call out:</p><p>“Yeah! Kill all of it! Kill the fog, Kiri!”</p><p>Kiri looked around, her beak turning under her hood, before charging off towards the fog, dagger in hand.</p><p>Well, shit. This was <em> exactly </em>why Molly hadn’t wanted to get attached.</p><p>They chased after her, of course - whether or not it was almost certain she’d get eaten tagging along after them, it was actually certain if she ran off on her own, and none of them <em> wanted </em>that, even if Molly was beginning to feel like they should be prepared for the worst - and between them Caleb and Jester managed to impress on her that splitting up, in this sort of swamp, was probably the quickest way to end up dead. She attached herself to Yasha after that, latching on like a small, feathery parasite as Yasha stared down at her with a half-pleased, half-baffled sort of look on her face.</p><p>They hadn’t been doing this long enough to have much of an idea of marching order, if they weren’t all piling onto the cart with a few of them as outriders on horseback. Molly expected there had been better attempts at organisation, and at least some of them had been made by cats, ducks and possibly oozes. Febron was fairly insistent that he wouldn’t be leading them, so Fjord was taking point along with Beau, with Jester somewhere in the middle of the pack with Kiri riding on her shoulders. Molly, as was fast becoming usual, ended up at the back beside Yasha, the better to watch the backs of their resident squishy magic-users. Well, he was assuming Cali was squishy, anyway. It seemed to be a running pattern, so long as he didn’t count Jester.</p><p>At the moment, the two seemed to be deep in conversation, apparently about fire magic, where it came from, and what else they could both do. Caleb’s curiosity flickering like a flame at the back of Molly’s mind. Also, she had just called him <em> Mr </em>Caleb, which was so adorable Molly was going to have to try it himself at some point, just to see that startled, charmed look on Caleb’s face for himself.</p><p>Molly hadn’t thought to ask, back at the Pillow Trove, why Caleb still used fire magic, given the state it tended to leave him in whenever he did. Or at least, whenever he used it on anything recognisably person-shaped - plants seemed to be fine. He could, he supposed, ask now - it had never been a secret that Caleb <em> was </em> afraid of fire, only <em> why </em>- except that, whatever the answer was, it was almost certainly something to do with what he’d done for Trent Ikithon - his parents’ deaths, or anything Ikithon had had him doing before that - and Molly had promised his secrecy.</p><p>As days went, Molly had had better. The novelty of the swamp wore off pretty fast, as it turned out, especially without any more interesting ruins to pester Caleb about the history of, and Febron was, it turned out, not nearly as good a guide as he’d made out. For a guy whose whole job involved walking to this safehouse and back, his sense of direction was so bad that if he could find his own arse most days, it was only because the rest of him came attached to it. Between that and the leering, it was kind of hard to feel sorry about what happened to him.</p><p>Besides. If you were going to work as a guide in a swamp you knew contained poisonous plants, man-eating plants and trolls, you really ought to be prepared to encounter any or all of these things if you weren’t good enough at guiding to avoid them. And that was what Molly was going to tell himself until he couldn’t picture Febron’s limp body being dragged off by a troll with his head bouncing at every step anymore.</p><p>Fortunately, one of the corpses knew where they were going - it was never <em> not </em>going to be creepy watching Jester do that, but then, Molly was hardly in a position to pass judgement on creepy - and the safehouse was close enough they might’ve just tripped over it by accident if they’d kept going.</p><p>Caleb was the first to head off in that direction, and for some reason reached out to <em> Beau </em>to help him out, when Molly was sitting right there with swords all out and ready:</p><p>“You, my good friend, would you walk with me in the direction that the dead person said that this entrance is in? Before my magic runs out.”</p><p>Beau’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you feel the need to call me a good friend?”</p><p>Caleb’s voice got, if anything, even flatter. “You’re right. Person that- is married to some of the same people as me, would you walk over before my spell runs out so that I can use it to help the group?”</p><p>Cali blinked. “Oh- So you two aren’t…”</p><p>“Not...really my area,” Beau hedged, confirming Molly’s mental bet with himself. He resolved to buy himself a drink as soon as they were back in town. Of something that <em> wasn’t </em>Labenda Throat Grog.</p><p>“It was...er...was rather easier to just...all go together, rather than specify,” Caleb agreed quickly. “It is...er…”</p><p>“Doesn’t really matter,” Molly cut in. “We’re all family anyway.” </p><p>Okay, maybe not <em> yet </em>, but...well. Friends you chose, family you didn’t, someone at the circus had always said, which confused the hell out of Molly. Then again, he hadn’t chosen any of these people, and here they were anyway.</p><p>Cali smiled shyly, ducking her head so that her hair fell over the half-elven side of her face as well as her scales. “You’re all- all very lucky.”</p><p>“We <em> are </em>, aren’t we?” Molly agreed. They were here, after all. Okay, the middle of a swamp full of trolls and people-eating plants wasn’t precisely ideal, but they weren’t being marched the front by the Righteous Brand, they hadn’t been gutted by the Gentleman for lying to him, and he wasn’t sitting in a cell next to Gustav back in Trostenwald. Life was, if not good, at least solidly better than it could be.</p><p>...of course, that was without reckoning on this safehouse being underground.</p><p>Once again, Molly was <em> fine </em>with being underground. Really. Half their lives, it seemed, were spent fighting things that lived underground. He could handle it. It didn’t leave a sick, lurching feeling in the pit of his stomach or his breath come just a little too fast. If anything, he was offended by the cliche.</p><p>So. Underground. Underground pool - underground water sources were getting to be another running theme in the Gentleman’s assignments for them, and Molly was <em> really </em>hoping that this wasn’t going to become a pattern - and merrows. Rather a lot of merrows.</p><p>Oh, and on the way down, Cali had chosen to lay out just what was so important about this bowl she was after, and why she was after it in the first place. As motives went, it sounded...fair enough, really, to Molly, though he could feel the suspicion coming off Caleb in waves. Too close to home, Molly supposed.</p><p>He kept supposing that right up until Cali was about to leave, after a thorough dredging of the pools had turned up nothing but skeletons and a fortune’s worth of jewellery that Molly was seriously contemplating just taking his pick from for his share of their score. Rings would be particularly nice, maybe stop people commenting so much on the wedding ring - he could swear. someone had enchanted the thing to be extra conspicuous or something, just another testament to how overly-attached their original owners had been. Wherever her bowl was, it seemed, it wasn’t here, which meant that Cali was going after it, wherever it was-</p><p>And then Caleb spoke up.<br/>“Tell me again,” he said, and for once he wasn’t stammering, wasn’t pausing or doubling back to be sure of himself. His voice was entirely steady, even though, through the bond, Molly could feel the echo of-</p><p>It was not, quite, the same as what he had felt in the gnoll mines, before he had even known who it belonged to, or in the sewers beneath Zadash. This was...it was a crisp, cold feeling, a...muffling. As if all Caleb’s pain and guilt and worry had been covered over with a layer of fresh snow, and all anyone could make out were the faint bumps and recesses on the ground where the pitfalls lay, ready to trap the unwary.</p><p>“What do you need it for?” Caleb went on, looking Calianna square in the face, the way he couldn’t look at any of them normally. “What are your intentions with it? Honestly, look me in the eye. What do you mean to do with this thing when you find it?”</p><p>Calianna’s face, the pale, half-elven half of it not hidden by her hair, was drawn. She looked almost sick with worry. “Mr Caleb- I want to destroy it. I mean-”</p><p>“How will you destroy it?” Caleb asked, still calmer than Molly had ever seen him, and nothing in the bond but that cold, blanketing feeling, a sheet of ice between them.</p><p>Calianna paused. Her mouth opened, and then closed again. “...to be honest with you, I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I- I know- I’ll find a way if I have to, but, I just- The biggest thing I’m afraid of, is that- the cult and Serissa, they’ll find somebody like me. They’ll find somebody descended from an ancient dragon like I was. And then they can do this all again. I got away once. I can’t let that happen to someone else.”</p><p>...now, there was a familiar story, if ever Molly had heard one.</p><p>He was still rather hazy, admittedly, on what it was that this cult was supposed to be doing - killing and torturing people had, admittedly, already come up, but that wasn’t usually an end in and of itself. Or rather, if it was, people could just get on and do it perfectly well without coming up with a whole deity and religion to justify it.</p><p>Apparently Caleb was anything but, though, since he seemed to want the entire Mighty Nein standing between him and Cali before he said whatever it was he had to say next. And then he produced the bowl from out of his satchel, and that particular decision began to make a lot more sense.</p><p>“Where did you find that?” Cali exclaimed, her eyes going saucer-wide, elven and dragon alike.</p><p>Jester actually gasped: “Caleb! You found the bowl! I’m so proud of you!”</p><p>“So proud of you!” Kiri echoed.</p><p>Jester flung out an arm to fall around Kiri’s shoulders. “Yeah! Kiri’s proud of you too!”</p><p>“No, Kiri,” Caleb said, still perfectly flat. “<em> Bren </em> found the bowl. Cali-” he paused, and for the first time since he’d begun this whole confrontation, stumbled a little in his speech. “-I would like to help you, but I- This thing is...powerful.”</p><p>Cali gave a hurried sort of nod, her eyes flicking from one member of the Nein to the next, still arrayed in a defensive line. “Yes.”<br/>“And I met you...ten hours ago?” <br/>She swallowed. She looked, all of a sudden, very small. “Mr Caleb, all I can tell you is that...the whole reason I came here is to find that, so- Let me put it this way. You care about these people? About your family?”</p><p>For a moment, through all that cold whiteness, Molly felt something twist and break.</p><p>“<em> Ja </em> ,” Caleb admitted, his voice cracking, just a little. “I do.” <br/>“Then don’t keep that thing! The cult will find you. I know more about them than you. I can- can hide. I can stay away from them - you don’t...you don’t know what these people will do to you. To your daughters. They’re...they don’t spare children.”</p><p>Caleb paused. “Well, I have a wonderful compromise,” he said, and this time he didn’t stumble at all. That unnatural coldness was still there, but now Molly thought he could make out the shapes of what lay beneath it, and none of it was good. Was this how Caleb had sounded, back in the old days, bright and confident, everything coming to him as easy as breathing? “You know, we can all camp down here as I suggested, you included, and in the morning my- Jester can get to the bottom of your intentions. For good. For real.”</p><p>Calianna didn’t get a chance to answer, as Beau snatched the bowl clean out of Caleb’s hands. He hadn’t been expecting it, and Molly felt the dulled edges of Caleb’s shock almost as his own. He hadn’t expected it either. What was it to Beau one way or the other? Jester, he might’ve halfway expected, but Beau...well, she’d been suspicious enough about trusting Molly just on the strength of a few tarot cards and a bit of harmless bullshit that he’d expected Cali to set off all her suspicious instincts, regardless of how sweet Cali came off as.</p><p>The bowl was...odd. It set off that old itch in the back of his mind, the cold voice that felt, now, even less his own hissing at him to take it, to look at it, even though he knew about as much about magic as he did about the political structure of the Nine Hells. Molly took a sideways step closer to Yasha, just to be a little bit further away from the thing so that maybe that voice would quieten down a bit, but it didn’t seem to be working.</p><p>“<em> Ca </em>leb,” Beau said, almost sing-song, holding the bowl straight up above her head, as far as her arm would extend.</p><p>The look he turned on her was flat and irritated. “<em> Why </em> would you not want to wait twelve hours to see if this woman’s intentions are true or not?”</p><p>Jester shrugged. “What difference does it make?”</p><p>“What <em> difference </em>does it make? This bowl-”</p><p>“You don’t have it in your hand anymore, Caleb.”</p><p>Caleb broke off, staring around at all of them. He was, for the first time since Molly had known him, standing perfectly straight and almost entirely confident, and Molly realised with an odd little shock that Caleb was actually taller than he was. Not by much - maybe two inches at the outside - but enough to be startling, for a moment, standing there with his face hard and his mind blanketed in cold white nothing - not the awful disconnection of the gnoll mines but something sharper, more focused, like a needle of the mind.</p><p>“This bowl that I am talking about that I am talking about can be used to speak to one of the most evil entities in the history of creation, so I think it warrants another <em> twelve hours </em>of waiting to get to the bottom of things.”</p><p>Jester crossed her arms tight. “I don’t think you should stop someone from trying to talk to a god if they want to talk to a god!”<br/>“Caleb-” Beau started.</p><p>“I- I don’t want to talk to her,” Cali interrupted. “I just- I want to make that clear.”</p><p>Yasha’s hand went to the hilt of her greatsword, over her right shoulder. “If you want to destroy it, why don’t we just destroy it right here?”</p><p>“I don’t think it can be,” Molly said, his eyes still drawn, irresistibly, back to the bowl. He didn’t know where that conviction came from - maybe just his own well-honed sense of the dramatic, that told him that destroying cultic artefacts deserved at least a little bit of a ritual - but there was something cold whispering in the back of his mind, and he wasn’t sure if it was his or Caleb’s or someone else entirely.</p><p>“I always thought you'd, well, you’d need something more impressive to do that,” Cali said slowly, so at least Molly wasn’t alone in that suspicion, even if it was just pure drama on his part - please, let it just be pure drama - “But if we can destroy it here, then so be it.”</p><p>Caleb’s voice softened a little. “I think it is going to be a little bit beyond your capabilities to destroy this bowl, Yasha.”</p><p>“Mr Caleb-”</p><p>“Oh, no, I don’t mean me,” Yasha said quickly, which...to be fair, if any of them could do that, Molly would’ve bet on Yasha. Or, he supposed, Caleb, but since Caleb didn’t seem to have any ideas, his money was on Yasha. “I- I think-”</p><p>“Caleb,” Beau cut in. “I- I respect you and all of your intentions, but...your caution does not get to control other people’s destinies.”</p><p>Caleb’s voice dropped again. “That bowl is used for communicating with-” a sudden, sickening crack in that coldness, an edge of hysteric laughter in his voice, and suddenly Molly didn’t know how he had ever taken that coldness for confidence, for anything but the sickening certainty that no decision he could make could be trusted. “-the Mother of Dragons-”</p><p>“You had no intentions of wanting this bowl, or needing this bowl, or caring about this bowl until Cali came around-”</p><p>“Beauregard,” Caleb snapped, turning to face her. “<em> You </em> keep the bowl, all night, so that Jester can use the spell she used in the past for truth. We’ve done it with less at stake before. And then we ask Cali, and I would <em> love </em>to hear that Cali’s intentions are true and good. And if they’re not, we’ll find out.”</p><p>“I believe you, Cali,” Jester cut in, looking appealingly over at Cali. “I don’t think I need to cast it on you.”</p><p>Cali looked nearly sick with worry. “But- You need to trust each other. I am- I am <em> so </em>sorry. You brought me along and this was supposed to be your honeymoon even if you’re working, and now-”</p><p>“Not your fault,” Molly interrupted. “This is an argument that’s been a...a while coming, honestly.”</p><p>He couldn’t say Caleb was being paranoid. They <em> had </em>only known Cali ten hours, and after everything he’d said...Caleb had his reasons not to trust. But this- Once was happenstance, twice was coincidence, three times was a pattern. And just going off what Caleb had said about it, that bowl was a hell of a lot more dangerous than a suit of fancy armour or a stolen scroll. Could they handle having an entire cult after them? Molly wasn’t precisely keen to find out, and it wasn’t what he’d signed up for. On the other hand, if this ritual turned out to be something adjacent to ending the world, as artefacts involving the Betrayer Gods always tended to be in stories, that was all of their necks on the line whether there was a cult after them or not.</p><p>“Yeah.” Beau folded her arms. “What- What gives you any more right to have it than she has? Because it’s not like the rest of us haven’t noticed, and we’re <em> fine </em>with you picking things up if it isn’t going to fuck the rest of us over, but-”</p><p>“Beauregard-” Caleb broke off. “I told you, I- I am- I am quite willing to entrust it to <em> you </em>while we get to the bottom of this-”</p><p>“That’s <em> not </em> the point here, Caleb!” Beau squared her shoulders. “This thing has <em> literally </em> nothing to do with us. It’s not your- your fucking job to just decide whether Cali gets what she’s looking for or not based on your- your issues or your-” she broke off. “It’s not for you to- to just decide that she doesn’t get to fucking leave because you think she’s a bit shifty! We’re <em> all </em>a bit shifty! You don’t get to dictate what other people do with their lives! Not for one night, not for any more than that.”</p><p>“...maybe so,” Caleb said after a moment, his voice cracking. “But this...it is in our hands now. And this thing is…”</p><p>“Powerful. Yeah. You said. Plenty of things are powerful. Doesn’t make us the people to decide who gets to have them.”</p><p>It wasn’t a bad point, Molly had to admit, except that he really would like to know if this ritual these bowls were being used for had any potential for actually ending the world or summoning the mother of all dragons <em> before </em>they had to deal with the end of the world or the mother of all dragons hitting them from behind with a barstool.</p><p>“Actually,” he butted in. “Here’s an insane thing that just occurred to me. It’s that...technically speaking, Charm Person lasts a really long time…”</p><p>Jester opened her mouth, probably to protest, but Cali was quicker.</p><p>“You cast something on your friend, the guide, right?” she asked. “To make him tell the truth.”</p><p>Caleb and Beau shared a look for a moment, and then Caleb glanced away.</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Do that on me.” Cali spread her hands. “I won’t resist it, I promise.”</p><p>This...seemed like more-or-less the perfect solution to Molly, even if he had suggested it himself. Not that he’d mind Cali sticking around a bit longer, but if she wanted to go he wasn’t sure he was up for keeping her here unwillingly, even just for one night to confirm that she really was everything she seemed to be. Molly hadn’t actually doubted her until Caleb made the point - he still wasn’t sure he did now. He’d always had pretty good luck with first impressions, after all.</p><p>“That’s fair,” he agreed. “I’m into that.”</p><p>Caleb ducked his head. “Yeah, okay. I suggest you tell us the absolute truth of your intentions with this bowl.”</p><p>Molly felt the flare of arcane power, saw the slight glazing of Cali’s eyes as she answered, head head moving oddly side-to-side like a snake’s for a few seconds before she was suddenly still.<br/>“I intend to either destroy it, or find somewhere secure that the Cult of the Caustic Heart, servants of the Scaled Tyrant, can’t find it, because...they knew my power.” She ducked her head, letting her hair fall to cover her whole face now. “They knew that...I’m descended from an ancient black dragon from far away. And if they find another one like me, they could do terrible things. I <em> promise </em> you, Mr Caleb. I promise you, that all I want is to right some of the wrongs that I once did as part of that group. I helped kill people, I  helped torture people- I’ve <em> got </em>to make this right, and that’s the only way I can do this. I don’t know much,” she admitted, “But I know that the only person who can take that thing and make sure it’s not used for ill is me.”</p><p>Guilt and shame seethed through the bond, the last of the cold melting away, and Molly could see the defeated slump of Caleb’s shoulders, the tension draining out of him. It wasn’t habit, this time, that had Molly reaching out to catch Caleb by the hand, loosely enough that he could pull away without any real effort, and Caleb turning towards him, startled and confused and more tired than even their fight with the merrows could account for.</p><p>“Mr Caleb,” he said, letting his fingers tighten, just for a moment, on Caleb’s hand before letting go. “There’s only so many burdens we’re expected to bear before we’re just asking for failure.” And, gods knew, Caleb had enough of his own already without taking responsibility for Cali’s guilt as well.</p><p>“I don’t want you to have to bear this one,” Cali agreed, tugging her long cloak closed with the half-elven hand, her face open and entirely sincere - a rare quality, in an honest person, for which Molly had to commend her.</p><p>Caleb’s voice, when he spoke again, wasn’t much more than a low mumble, his fingers working spasmodically at the cuff of his coat.<br/>“I am...glad for you to take it. I’m a little surprised at the rest of you for objecting to me being cautious, but, er, I’m glad for you to take it.”</p><p>“Oh no, I’m with you,” Molly cut in quickly. Not that he didn’t have a few bad habits involving magical artefacts, but he could get behind it this time.</p><p>Cali let out one long breath: “Thank you.”</p><p>Molly did his best not to listen to what was being said in the corner, as Beau dragged Caleb off, but it wasn’t a big room, and they weren’t troubling to keep their voices down. Not his responsibility, he reminded himself. Not his business. Even if he was pretty sure that Caleb wasn’t the only one dragging past griefs into a situation that didn’t, on the surface, have much to do with them. Even if he could <em> feel </em> , squirming and exposed and horribly invasive, the fear and the guilt and the awful vindication that at last, at least, someone in their ragtag little group was seeing Caleb as he saw himself. He felt, too, the honest shock at the idea that Cali might take Caleb’s side - Cali, who had responded to everything up to and including one joke about <em> skinning her draconic arm </em> that...looking back, had probably gone over the line...with a polite, nervous smile and a barrage of apologies at the first suggestion that she might’ve made anyone even the slightest bit unhappy with her - and the guilt that followed.</p><p>It wasn’t exactly a surprise when he walked away and, despite Yasha’s nudge in the ribs, the pressure of both Nott and Jester’s eyes on him, Molly wasn’t about to go after him, and dredge all that pain and guilt and everything that seemed to thrive on it out into the open air.</p><p>It only took one blow of Yasha’s new sword, complete as it was with a fascinating little flash of lightning just as it hit, to shatter the bowl so thoroughly that no amount of glue was going to put that back together. Honestly, Molly half-wanted to see if they’d get anything good for the pieces - sold separately, but there was probably something valuable in there - even as the other half of him wondered if it counted as bad faith to sell something that had a fraction of the potential to summon an evil god with it. Probably it’d be okay if you could melt it down, but of course the cultists who’d made the thing had chosen to do it in marble, and you’d have a hell of a time getting that inlay out in any state to use it again.</p><p>Easier to think about that, and about just how big a drink Molly owed Yasha when they got back to town - the biggest they served, possibly an entire bathtub’s worth of whatever alcohol took her fancy - and about the way Yasha was still crackling with static electricity when Cali hugged her, how she tensed up for a moment before awkwardly patting Cali on the back.</p><p>“Thank you so much,” Cali was saying as she pulled away, her half-elven cheek and the tip of that ear a little pink even in the dim light down here. “You don’t understand what this means.”<br/>Yasha shifted awkwardly. “You’re welcome. I- I hope- I hope...I’m glad it was me and not you, so you don’t get in trouble or- or get- you know, you’re not marked.”</p><p>Cali looked away. “I mean...I’m sure the Scaled Tyrant is looking for me in other ways, but...thank you. You guys…” she looked around at all of them. “I’ve never had people look after me and help me like this before, you know. You guys are probably the first friends I’ve ever had, and I just...I’m so sorry I got you into a fight on your honeymoon…”</p><p>Molly shrugged. “It’s...it’s okay. I mean...if we ended up fighting over this, odds are we’d have ended up fighting over something. We’ll get past it,” he added, with more confidence than he felt. “We always have before.”</p><p>“...yeah,” Beau agreed, an odd look on her face. “We’re...it’s going to take more than just this to…” she coughed. “So...you...going anywhere in particular?”</p><p>Cali brightened. “I’ll head back to Port Damali. There’s other, er, artefacts I need to find and destroy, but now I know that they <em> can </em>be. That’s what I’m going to focus on.”</p><p>“We might find our way down to the Menagerie Coast at some point,” Fjord said, “And if we do, we’ll give you a look.”<br/>Cali nearly beamed. “I’d really like that, please.”</p><p>She was even more delighted by the idea of being pen-pals with Jester, and after another round of hugs, and a quiet word with Nott, Cali was gone, disappearing up the ladder in a whirl of pale skirts and heavy leather boots, leaving the Nein alone again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So. That happened.<br/>I'm going off Talks Machina for a lot of my interpretation here, as Marisha was pretty clear that Beau...while she has a point about this being partly informed by Caleb's trauma, is actually responding the way she does because Caleb's suggested course of action got her right in her own issues re: authority, confinement and so on.<br/>Please, do not start Bowlgate again in my comments section - I am trying to get across that both sides of this had a solid point that got lost in their trauma and their respective character flaws, even if Molly leans more towards one side of the argument than the other.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Yet another filler chapter, I'm afraid, but next chapter is when things start changing in...increasingly big ways.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>There were many things with which Caleb did not feel particularly comfortable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The feeling of Yasha’s greatsword scraping, impossibly gently, across the skin of his face and neck was one of them. The way Mollymauk Tealeaf looked at him, when he woke to find Caleb as close to clean-shaven as he had been in years, was another.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Clearly, this whole thing had just been a bad idea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d only been sitting up with her in the first place because he couldn’t get it out of his head - the argument and the choking fear of betrayal even from Cali, who had come from a pit, perhaps, not so very dissimilar to the one that Caleb had crawled out of, but made herself a much better person for it, and the sight of the trident whistling towards Frumpkin so Caleb barely had the presence of  mind to snap him away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he’d asked for advice because...because, honestly, who else was there to ask? Nott...had a way with people, but it was not a way Caleb could emulate easily, or perhaps at all. Beauregard...was the person he needed to find a better way of getting along with. Fjord, he hardly knew and could not forget the sword at his throat, however deserved it might have been. Jester was...charming, yes, but it was not a charm one could learn. It took a particular gift to introduce yourself to a stranger by telling him he stank, whether he meant to do it or not, and still make a positive impression. And then there was Molly. Mollymauk. Who was...inimitable, even if Caleb had wanted to. Yasha seemed every bit as awkward as Caleb himself, but she had managed well enough, it seemed, with the circus, and even among the Nein, she had yet to provoke any of the others into outright anger. </span>
  <em>
    <span>And she was, of all of them, the closest to Mollymauk,</span>
  </em>
  <span> a treacherous part of his brain whispered, but that- It was not his to hope for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if someone has a conversation with me, I will...talk to them?” she offered, in her same incongruous soft, sweet voice, that always caught Caleb a little off-guard to hear it. “And…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve tried that too,” Caleb half-whispered back, painfully aware of the others lying asleep all around them, Kiri curled up and trilling softly to herself in her sleep, her feathers puffed out around her like Frumpkin in the cold or in a temper, what little could be seen of them above the top of Nott’s blanket. “And it goes </span>
  <em>
    <span>horribly</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha drew in a breath, something like a gasp, “No,” she said, so kindly that Caleb almost flinched from it. “I don’t think it goes as bad as you think. Molly likes talking to you, when you let him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That thought sent an awful, treacherous little thrill of delight down Caleb’s spine, and he stamped down on it ruthlessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- We do not speak very often,” he muttered. “And with everyone else, I- I think it goes pretty bad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha paused. “I mean, yes,” she admitted, more straightforwardly, which was better than kindness. “sometimes I think it's been pretty bad even, you know, for me sometimes, watching...you. But- You know, that doesn’t mean-” she shrugged her huge, frankly even-better-than-Eadwulf’s shoulders. “You know, there’s- there’s always room for improvement-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb squinted at her. “I’m confused, did you have advice?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think I’m good at giving advice,” Yasha admitted. “But...you know, just- just talk to people if they talk to you, and...you know, be nice. Um. You know...eat with your mouth closed, um, wash your hands…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was the sort of advice you might give a young child - or, Caleb supposed, a tiefling freshly crawled out of the earth with no memory and no sense for how people behaved - but he noted it down anyway, just to be sure. There were a lot of things Caleb had let slide, since the asylum. Even he couldn’t remember them all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Be nice to Molly, especially,” Yasha added. “I...you know, you do not seem...I don’t think I’ve seen you be deliberately unkind, but if you are, I will know. He will tell me. And you do- You do need to talk to each other. I know it is...that it can be difficult, and with the rings I suppose you can read each other’s minds, but it isn’t...you know, it’s not really the same thing as talking about it…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, even having a conversation not unlike this one with Fjord had not prepared him for the thought of having it with Yasha.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I think we are operating under a, er, a misunderstanding here,” he managed. “I- Mollymauk and I, we are not...that is not what we are...I realise that what happened night at the Pillow Trove may seem...suggestive, to an outside eye, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha blinked at him. “...I know,” she said. “If it hadn’t been, Molly would be…” her mouth twisted up. “I know what he is like, when he is...after he has found someone he wants to spend a night with, who would also like to spend the night with him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha shrugged. “You are...are connected to him now. Whether you...whether you want to call it a marriage or not is up to you, and if you want to take it any farther or- or dissolve it entirely, when you find a way, that is...that is your decision, and his, and...you know, I will trust his judgement. It...that is not the sort of decision anyone else should make for you. But there are other ways to be unkind to someone, when you have that...that sort of insight, and I think you know that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yes,” he said, his voice distant even to his own ears. “I do- I do know that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha, mercifully, didn’t press him. She coughed, and cleared her throat. “Er...also, wash- wash your hair when you can…” she glanced up at his hair, and then away again. “...that’s fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at her. “It just rained though,” he said, affecting as much bewilderment as he could. “This is the cleanest I’ve been in...weeks…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, two weeks, anyway. Not since the bathhouse in Zadash, at least.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha stared at him. A faint, disbelieving noise escaped her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel like you’re still-” she paused, and then all at a rush asked: “How do you stay dirty all the time?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked away. “Well…” he coughed. “Most of the time I’m trying to,” he admitted. He was now, anyway. In the beginning...he’d been too desperate to care in those first few weeks, running and hiding and trying desperately to stay out of sight. Then he’d seen his own face in a mirror and recoiled at the stranger he saw there and that- That had been useful. If he didn’t know his own face, how could anyone else be asked to, after all? “People don’t pay attention to beggars so much,” he went on, hoping that would be enough to make it clear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha was a long time about answering. “...okay,” she said at last. “So you don’t want people to pay attention to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once, Caleb remembered with a sharp sort of pang, he’d thrived on it. Being the centre of attention for a whole room had been...easier, often, than talking to only one or two people at a time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, in general.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Does...that include us?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb huffed out a breath. “I...sometimes I think it would be easier if it did,” he admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, when he had thought of joining a group so he and Nott could hide within their numbers, he had not stopped to consider, beyond the obvious concerns of ingratiating themselves, that he would have to deal with the rest of that group.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I get that,” Yasha admitted quietly. “I feel that, but I- ah. Um. I’m hard to miss. I don’t mean that in a, like, you know ‘woo, I’m hard to miss’-” she added hurriedly, striking a pose unnervingly similar to some of the paintings back at Chastity’s Nook to demonstrate what she was not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re as big as a giant barn, you are hard to miss,” he agreed. Yasha could probably pick Caleb up, hold him over her head and break him over her knee if she took it into her mind to do so, and Caleb was in no hurry to test that assessment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yeah,” Yasha admitted. “Well, I- I don’t...I don’t talk much.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I noticed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I don’t...I am not always here, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.” Caleb paused. He almost wanted to ask what she was doing...except that that would open him up to questions in return, and Yasha...he liked Yasha, well enough. But...he did not know, yet, if he could trust her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, that had led to him blurting out that he missed being clean-shaven, which, while true, was not even remotely relevant, just to change the subject before she pushed any further. Which had led to him agreeing to have his face shaved with a five-foot broadsword with the ability to dispel magic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the positive side, losing his nose to Yasha’s broadsword would at least make him even harder to recognise. On the negatives, he really, really didn’t want to lose his nose if he could possibly avoid it, and a disfiguring scar, if someone knew about it, was a very easy identifying feature to remember.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He might, however, have decided against it if he’d known how the others were going to react.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He squirmed, quietly wishing that he really could just shrivel up and die from sheer embarrassment under Jester’s cooing, Beau and Fjord’s teasing and the way Mollymauk’s eyes kept lingering around his face. He could feel his face growing hot, and now there wasn’t even the cover of a few weeks’ worth of beard to hide the awful, betraying flush. This was- It was dangerous to have this many eyes on him, even if he couldn’t think there was still anything so very memorable about him, even if no-one could take him, now, for the student Trent had said showed promise when it came to the softer forms of interrogation, the kind that could be done without its target ever becoming aware.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Well done, she likes you!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Even after a second round with the ‘beacon’, whatever it was, those words still managed to trip him up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Getting Yasha to like him had, admittedly, been the aim of the exercise - well, that and distracting her from asking any more probing questions - but he hadn’t expected it to work so quickly. He was...well aware, now, that he had lost whatever talent he had once possessed for forming friendships, and Yasha...it was comfortable, that she didn’t have Jester’s easy, confident way of drawing a person in or Mollymauk’s dazzling, can’t-look-away flamboyance, but it didn’t do much to smooth over the gaps left in conversation by Caleb’s inept fumbling, after years out of practice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fortunately, there were still merrows to kill, and that, at least, was somewhere Caleb could still make himself useful without having to think too hard about his social shortcomings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, getting himself knocked out hadn’t been quite the way he’d wanted to stop thinking about it, but this life had its hazards, and at least this time he hadn’t woken up inadvertently married to anyone </span>
  <em>
    <span>else</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The merrow had, apparently, been enthusiastic collectors of anything related to outlawed or forbidden gods. Caleb didn’t think he’d seen this many forbidden holy symbols all in one place since...well, since the last time he and Wulf and Astrid had been sent to deal with a heretic...it would be seventeen years ago now. The man had been a blacksmith, if Caleb remembered correctly, who had sold forbidden idols under the table. Astrid had nailed his hand to the table with one of his own blades while Caleb put him to the fire to name his buyers. Either Caleb had never learnt the man’s own name, or he hadn’t troubled to remember it, but if he concentrated, he could probably rattle off that list of heretics - of worshippers of illegal gods, ‘heretic’ was </span>
  <em>
    <span>their </span>
  </em>
  <span>word - even now, just off the top of his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were weapons here too, and plenty of them - taken off other unlucky travellers? Or had this been what the Gentleman was smuggling? - and a few large, locked boxes that were just crying out for someone to uncover whatever secrets they were hiding.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The search for magical items turned up a beautiful golden scimitar, which had Mollymauk’s name etched on it just as clearly as the undersea armour had had Fjord’s, and Caleb had managed to pocket an icon of the Archeart while Jester was fishing some kind of magical orb - not arcane, but powerful nonetheless - out of the pool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only took ten minutes to cast the ritual for the sword, and then...well, if it hadn’t been gaudy enough already for him to think it was made for Mollymauk, this would have confirmed it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mr Mollymauk,” he said, looking up, once he was done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s tail flicked upwards, quivering a little at the end before curling into a loop. “Mr Caleb?” he returned, with a smile that showed off all those sharp white teeth. Caleb dragged his gaze away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I feel like this might be good for you,” he said slowly, marshalling his thoughts. “This- Um. There is a- a kind of magic that I do not even possess that allows you to vanish from one point and-” he snapped his fingers to illustrate. “Reappear in another, and this, er, blade will allow you to do it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk cackled. “You’re going to get yours,” he said, leaning over until Caleb could almost feel the ghost of his breath against his forehead. “Oh, yes.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>It was, Caleb told himself sharply, completely ridiculous where his imagination had chosen to take that comment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s been less than a month and he’s already getting preferential treatment when the loot’s being handed out?” Fjord muttered, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth and- and, Caleb realised, if Fjord had believed him about the rooms to begin with, he certainly didn’t now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It...it is a very fine blade,” he allowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s smile widened. “I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>grateful.” He leaned a little closer, even, for a moment, before drawing back, leaving Caleb confused and agitated and, horribly, bereft.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I mean…” he coughed. “It is, er, more lethal than a regular blade, and will allow you to-” he snapped his fingers again. “Poof, poof, poof…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk put his head on one side. “...I’ve been called worse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Was</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Nothing! I’ll be living the dream. Remind me to buy you a drink or something later.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shifted uneasily. “It...that isn’t necessary, Mollymauk. But thank you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s face fell, a little, and through the bond Caleb felt a low curl of disappointment, but- No. He was projecting. Sometimes it was harder to draw a line between what he felt and what Mollymauk did, and this must be one of those times.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau cleared her throat. “Uh...not that I’m not sorry to break up the flirting,” she said awkwardly. “But...the cat’s eye?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh- Yes.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Caleb drew the stone a bit closer, and set about the ritual. Caleb wasn’t even halfway through when Fjord reached out to give the stone a little poke- And froze, his whole body going rigid before, like a sleepwalker, he reached out to take the stone in his hands, disrupting Caleb’s concentration as he looked up to ask what Fjord thought he was playing at- And saw the stone melt into Fjord’s chest, through his armour, before Fjord lurched up and towards the pool, as if he meant to throw himself in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took all of them to wrestle him back from the edge, and when he came back to himself, Fjord had no better explanation for it than the rest of them. Some inherent property of the stone? But then why had Fjord been the only one affected?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It meant, at least, that they could hear his story. The shipwreck, his mentor, what he’d seen in whatever dream or vision or...honestly, Caleb had very little idea of what this phenomenon had been. Honestly, Nott’s ‘half whale’ suggestion wasn’t even the strangest possibility he could think of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least they knew, now, what the merrows had been after. Without the stone, they could seal up these tunnels and...well, possibly wait for more merrows to come and attack Fjord in order to cut him open and get their stone back, but they could probably deal with that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Admittedly, drowning Fjord wasn’t a solution Caleb would’ve put forward, but he didn’t seem to have taken any harm from it, and if he was going to grow gills or something, now seemed like the time to find out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t, and it didn’t take long for them all to agree that staying in this network of merrow tunnels with a heap of dead merrows next to them was probably not the brightest decision they could possibly make.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t expected to find himself pulled aside by Beau again, once they were all on the surface, with Jester and Yasha sorting out the bodies hanging up outside the safehouse. It was easier, this time. At least, the part of his backbrain that still expected pain from any unexpected touch was easier to quiet, out here in the grey morning light of the swamp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had to say, an apology was the last thing he’d expected from her. He’d...rather thought it was generally accepted that he had been the one out of line last night, even if he didn’t quite feel that way, even now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a few seconds, all he could do was just stare at her, tracing the whorls of his scars over the heavy fabric of his coat, trying to find the trap, the ‘but’ that was inevitably coming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- You saw the worst side of me-” Beauregard was saying now, and if that...if that was the worst side that Beauregard had to show, he didn’t know why she was apologising to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been a long time since he hugged anyone but Nott.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or- It had been a long time since he </span>
  <em>
    <span>initiated </span>
  </em>
  <span>a hug with anyone but Nott, at least. He still wasn’t completely sure he was doing it right,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admitted against Beauregard’s hair, trying desperately to catch Yasha’s eye just to get some guidance on this. Yasha hugged people, right? She was friends with Mollymauk, so Caleb didn’t see how she could avoid it. “Just go with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha made a vague patting gesture. Yes, he was supposed to pat Beau...somewhere? Caleb didn’t know, hugs had never...really been a big part of his life. Well, not since he was a child, anyway, and whenever he’d come home to see his parents after he’d left for the Academy. He didn’t remember patting coming into it very much, but Yasha was, he supposed, the expert.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t think he was imagining it that Beau looked about as relieved as he felt once they’d hugged long enough that they could respectably stop. He could’ve done without the round of applause from everyone but Fjord and Kiri, admittedly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was really good, guys!” Nott said, soft-voiced as she always was when she thought Caleb had been hurt somehow, which was ridiculous. He was...maybe a little worse for wear after being knocked out in the fight with the merrows, but they’d all dealt with worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Welcome to the Mighty Nein!” Kiri echoed, which appeared to mean about the same thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He managed an attempt at a laugh that sounded rather more like a sheep with a throat condition. “That’s not necessary.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott bristled. “Yes it is! She was really rude to you, and-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not necessary,” Caleb repeated. “Working on it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau hadn’t initially seemed like she wanted to prolong the conversation, but at that she looked around. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh- Good talk,” she said, a bit too loudly, and slapped a hand down on Caleb’s shoulder. “...friend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb tried not to make an uncomfortable choking hand and failed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau paused. “...seriously, though,” she added, in a much more normal tone of voice. “Like...friend?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked at her. He didn’t...see why she would want that. She, of all of them, who owed him least and knew most to tell her just what a bad idea friendship with him would be.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...ja, okay,” he said, after a long moment, and was surprised by the relief on Beau’s face.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Ja,” she said. “Ja- Ya? How do you say it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord burst out in a sudden fit of suspicious coughing after that, but, to be fair, Beau had so far managed to get closer to pronouncing any Zemnian properly than anyone else in their motley group.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t entirely relax, though, until he saw Yasha’s little thumbs-up gesture. Caleb still wasn’t quite sure why he trusted her to steer him rightly, but- he did, or he thought he did. At least in this. She seemed...decent, he supposed. Decent enough that she would probably never talk to him again if she knew the truth of him, but that was really only a testament to her character.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After that, it seemed, they were going to find the troll that had killed Febron and...blow up its house, apparently. Caleb still wasn’t exactly sure why this was a priority, except possibly that they had already paid Febron and the money might still be on his corpse, assuming it hadn’t been eaten yet. Though, really, after the tournament they were flush enough that dying for another hundred gold, when they’d just earned two thousand as soon as they could get back to the Gentleman to collect, did not seem like the wisest idea they’d ever had. On the other hand...Beauregard had apologised, and Caleb thought she meant it. She did not seem the sort to say things she did not mean. All the same, he had not...he had alienated more than just Beauregard last night. Perhaps it would be better to bend to the whims of the group for a while, if he had no really pressing objections.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, for the moment, he didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So. They found the troll. And blew its house up. Somehow, it didn’t seem to have the desired effect. They fought the troll. They killed the troll. And then the troll got straight back up again, even angrier than before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord was unconscious, the troll was looming over them, and Caleb didn’t even think.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first bolt caught it in the shoulder, and the beast reared back, its hide already smoking, blackening. The second caught it on the chest, just at the other side, and Caleb watched with an odd, distant feeling as the fire spread across its chest and down, before the last bolt caught it clean in the jaw, and for a moment, lit from below, he could see the creature’s face, its mouth open, its dull eyes reflecting the firelight-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except it wasn’t the troll’s face anymore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the flames, Leofric Ermendrud’s face twisted, screamed, blackened into ash and was blown away on the wind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Caleb-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His knees had given out underneath him, was the first thing he realised. There was swamp water soaking through his trousers. Then there was an arm around his shoulders, dragging him upright-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk, he thought. Mollymauk had come again-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when he gathered himself to look it was Beauregard, not his- not Molly, who had him, her arm locked tight around his shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She breathed out when he got his feet under him enough to pull away, with no small amount of obvious relief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There you are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb reached up to rub at his eyes, glad that for once, he found no wetness there. It had been...distressing, he recalled, to wake sometimes and find tears on his face, when he did not remember crying. It was one of the few scattered memories he had of the asylum.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard produced a pair of waterskins from out of her bag. “Here. This one’s water,” she said, holding one out, and then proffered the other. “This one’s booze.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb took the alcohol, and took one long swig, and nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt something damp and cool against his forehead. But was only Beauregard, dabbing at his face with her sash.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You all right?” she asked gruffly, peering at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a moment to find his voice. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he managed, barely more than a whisper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cool.” She nodded. “Cool, cool, cool. We, uh, we should head back, catch up with the others.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” It was, at least, a little louder this time. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I-” Caleb cut himself off. He did not want to say ‘I expected you to be Molly’. Beauregard had been...very kind to him, and this way there was no- no awkwardness around what had compelled her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He did not want to reach for the knowledge that Mollymauk was there, back in the clearing where the troll had died, down to the tree he was leaning on, but that didn’t mean the knowledge wasn’t there, or the gut-churning anxiety that had come in at about the same time he’d started to see anything but the flames.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>a fire, when they finally wandered back to the clearing - a small one, where the oil and at least one fireball had gone astray and ended up setting light to a pile of discarded skulls, heaped carelessly, like cherry stones, near the ruins of the troll’s former house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somehow, he felt a little less anxious once the others were back in view, even though that had never been what he’d been worrying about.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb!” Nott darted over. “Here. I’m giving out the gold. It’s twenty-six gold pieces, and the rest probably went up in the explosion along with whatever’s left of Febron. Which doesn’t look like much, but...anyway, the point is, twenty-six gold. That’s three each, and I’m keeping the extra.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was, Caleb thought dazedly, rather a testament to the truly outrageous amounts of money that they had been making lately that his first thought was that that really didn’t seem like very much money, given all the trouble they had gone through to get it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Danke</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he managed, because Zemnian was easier than Common just now, and found a broken-off piece of troll-house detritus to sit on, as far from the fire and the rest of the Nein as he could get until he could feel his feet under him again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, that was when Mollymauk decided to sit down on the ruined lump of wood beside him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You feeling any better?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Shouldn’t he be able to tell? It wasn’t as though Caleb knew how to block Mollymauk out, and he doubted very much that Mollymauk had had any better luck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...</span>
  <em>
    <span>ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a little,” he said hoarsely, after a few seconds, when it became clear that Molly was still waiting for his answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good. That’s…” he paused. “Does....I know this doesn’t happen every time, but...it’s happened often enough I have to ask...why do you still use it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at him. “It is...I hardly have many other skills,” he admitted haltingly. “And even if I did, I do- I do like magic-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not…” Mollymauk was already shaking his head. “Not the magic. The fire. Why...why keep using that, when it does this to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb hunched his shoulders. “I...it is...it would not stop me knowing the spells, and- and sometimes…” he shrugged. “It is...just the first thing I reach for, I suppose.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was, too. Even now, when he didn’t stop to think, his first instinct was always for his fire, his specialty. The first spell he had ever cast, the one that had made him and destroyed him...the one that would never let him forget.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s eyes narrowed a little. “That’s...not everything, though, is it? I mean...there’ve been times I didn’t know what I was doing except that it was some creepy blood bullshit, but that’s not…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. It is not.” Caleb looked down at his filthy boots. “It is nothing to worry about. I am- It has not hurt us yet, has it? As a- a group, it has not-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not worried about the </span>
  <em>
    <span>group</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Caleb. Just…” Molly sighed. “Look...I get that we’d probably all be either dead or still trying to fight that thing off if you hadn’t- And I’m not sure there </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>another way, I mean...you saw the way that thing kept regenerating when we used anything else on it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...then I don’t- don’t see what the problem is.” Caleb shrugged. “I can handle myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never said you couldn’t.” Molly snorted. “You know, you’ve saved all our lives a couple times now. That’s not what…” he paused. “I just want to know why you’re still using it, given…” he made a vague gesture, apparently intended to encompass Caleb’s episode, the general devastation around them, and that other episode, back in the gnoll mines at Alfield.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “Well...er...force- force of habit, really. And it would- it would take time, to find other, equally effective spells to do the same job when I could be learning something new.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...wouldn’t those equally effective spells count as ‘something new’?” Molly asked, the calmness of his voice belied by the way his tail whipped back and forth, almost catching Caleb with the spade-tip before Molly noticed and jerked it back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “Perhaps. But they are...it is not something I am interested in learning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk,” Caleb cut him off. “Your concern is- It is appreciated. Truly. But it is not necessary. I can deal with my...episodes...without endangering the group, and I...think that is all you need to know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk looked mulish, but after a moment sighed and looked away. “Okay. That’s...okay. I’m not going to force you. You just got…” another vague gesture. He paused. “You need something to eat? Something to drink? You’re looking all…” he waved a hand. “Peaky.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at him. “No,” he said after one befuddled moment. “That is...no. I am fine. I just- need to sit here quietly for a bit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right,” Molly said, sounding relieved, and didn’t move. Caleb wished he would - they weren’t touching, but it wasn’t a particularly big piece of detritus that they were sitting on, and Caleb could feel the heat of Molly’s body all along his side like the ghost of a touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was another hour, in the end, before they were ready to set off again. But then, Fjord had been knocked out twice in the fight, and they were all of them a bit the worse for wear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott worried over him as they were setting off - Caleb must have used more of his fire since they had taken up with the Nein than he had in all the five years before that - but...well, it was unnecessary, and she’d seen enough of his attacks to know he’d be better soon enough, so long as he didn’t have to think about it too much in the meantime.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, no sooner had he thought that than the troll’s burning face rose up again in his mind, and Caleb swallowed bile. Fine. He would be fine. They just needed to get back to Berleben, and without Febron, maybe he’d be able to room with Nott as nature intended. He hadn’t expected Yasha to worry too, but...well, as Kiri kept reminding him, he had been the one to say that they were friends now, and worry was, in Caleb’s experience, about half of what kept a friendship going once whatever charm you possessed had worn thin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was nightfall before they got back to Berleben, the village lit with hanging lanterns which somehow managed to take a miserable shithole full of brackish water and the ruins of once-prosperous buildings and turned it into something new and strange, the light of the candles reflected in the muddy water, multiplying a dozen lights into hundreds. Or maybe that was just Mollymauk’s delight and fascination buoying him up, sparking under his skin even through the exhaustion of a day that had contained two separate battles and another of his...episodes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We did it!” Jester half-hissed and half-yelled, which was a very odd combination to hear, bouncing up on one foot with a fist in the air like the conquering hero of one of the old propaganda songs of Caleb’s childhood.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard was peering around the Puddles, her mouth downturned. “Is there another inn? Other than that, like, bougie, terrible, underground situation?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you just say bougie?” Molly asked, squinting at her in apparently-honest revulsion at the thought. “Ugh. God. Never mind, I don’t like you again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I think there is-” Fjord started, but Beauregard cut him off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was pretty bougie!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Jester chimed in. “We were in the bad part of town. We can go to the nice part of town.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It seemed to Caleb like no-one was going to ask, which meant it was up to him.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“What is this word ‘bougie’?” he asked Beauregard, as quietly as he could. He had thought his Common was as good as it was going to get - he’d been speaking and working and living in it for years now, since Soltryce - the Academy had served the whole Empire, after all, even if he and Astrid and Wulf had spoken, most of the time, in Zemnian amongst themselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard’s brow furrowed. She seemed to be struggling to come up with a definition herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh...like when, uh, you want to try and seem fancy, but it’s a little ostentatious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb had not thought that the Keystone Pub was making any real effort at seeming fancy at all - if it had been, it had gone so entirely over his head that he had never even noticed it - but then...his experience of ostentation had not been so great as all that. It was possible that he was missing something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that in Common?” he asked, frowning. “Is that a Common word?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester was glancing around at the rest of them. “I don’t know…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a word that people use when they want to sound ostentatious about how ostentatious something is,” Molly supplied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This...still did not particularly seem to fit the dark, dank Keystone Pub, so far as Caleb was concerned. The only aesthetic Dent Bonswallow appeared to be going for with his pub could possibly be described as ‘contemporary podunk prison cell’, Caleb could say with confidence, having been an unwilling guest in rather too many of those.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Beauregard agreed. “It’s short for ‘bourgeois’, which is super ostentatious.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That...was not the sense in which Trent had occasionally used the term, when disparaging the petty ambitions of Rexxentrum burghers and socially ambitious merchants, so Caleb was quite at a loss. Someone was probably using the word wrongly, though, and a small, petty part of him hoped that it had been Trent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Zemnian word for that is like seven syllables long,” he said instead, trying to figure out if there was a Zemnian word, exactly, for what they were getting at, even if it didn’t quite fit the Keystone pub, which was </span>
  <em>
    <span>trostlos </span>
  </em>
  <span>from beginning to end. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Protzig</span>
  </em>
  <span>, maybe, which wasn’t long enough to satisfy if they asked him, but maybe if he added a couple of extra syllables at the end. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Prätentiöse </span>
  </em>
  <span>might work better. He’d put the two together if anyone asked. It wasn’t as though most of his companions could tell the difference between Zemnian and a coughing fit, anyway, and-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No. He was not going to do that just because he wanted to hear Mollymauk try and wrap his tongue around whatever nonsense Caleb came up with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard snickered. “That’s ostentatious.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Of course, then Jester had to send back to the Gentleman that they’d succeeded, exceeding her spell’s word limit at every turn, and Caleb found himself so distracted by trying to figure out how much the Gentleman had actually heard that he didn’t notice the man in the long cloak until he was nearly on top of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took Caleb a moment or two to place Horris Thrym’s face in the lantern-light - he looked rather the worse for wear, not that Caleb had any room to talk, pale and worn and obviously worried sick about Dolan, left behind in Zadash having just conspired to unseat the High-Richter - but Beauregard got there a second before him. It was a surprising relief to know that the man had not, in fact, simply been murdered and his corpse thrown into the underground river. Though, Caleb supposed, the threat of a build-up of corpses and possible undead disrupting shipping would probably convince the Gentleman to find some other means of disposing of inconvenient people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They promised to get word back to Dolan that Horris was well, and that he should send word to Berleben when it was safe for Horris to return - it shouldn’t take very long, now that Dolan was High-Richter himself, and thus in a position to reverse his husband’s banishment - and signally failed to acquire any diamonds, which was predictable, if disappointing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where are you staying right now?” Beauregard asked, looking around - a sound idea, Caleb supposed, if they were going to bring Dolan back a message.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I’m over at the Drowned Nest.” Horris hiked a thumb over his shoulder, presumably in the direction of the Drowned Nest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was not, Caleb had to admit, the most fortuitous name for an inn he had ever heard, but then, ‘The Keystone Pub’ sounded downright inviting just on the strength of the name.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>From the way the rest of the Nein chorused it, they shared some of Caleb’s reservations. Or possibly just wanted to be sure of remembering the name, who could say. Certainly not Caleb, who just wanted to get to some inn - </span>
  <em>
    <span>other </span>
  </em>
  <span>than the Keystone Pub and its cell-like underground rooms - and sleep for as long as his mind and body would let him. He didn’t know how long that would be - he’d got too used to surviving on catnaps in whatever hollow he and Nott could find for the night, too used to startling awake at every noise - but right now he was prepared to trust to hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard appeared to have had the same idea.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“How are rooms there?” she asked, not quite casually. “Are they underground and filled with water and mould?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Horris shook his head, “No, they’re better than that place.” He gestured at the Keystone Pub behind them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau brightened. “Oh, great, where did you say-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Who would- Who would stay there, right? I mean-” Fjord agreed, which was a bit rich coming from the one member of their party who’d got a room to himself the last night they’d stayed here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Horris’s mouth twisted up. “Not to my standards.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt Molly bristle at that, just a little, which made no sense, given that so far as Caleb knew, Mollymauk hadn’t liked the little underground cells any better than Caleb himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s quaint and rustic, shut up,” Molly muttered - definitely a lie, unless they were operating by definitions of ‘quaint’ and ‘rustic’ almost as far off as that for ‘bourgeois’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Drowned Nest,” Beauregard repeated again, entirely ignoring Mollymauk. “Do they have a tavern at the Drowned Nest?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah- I’m sure you could acquire a drink there,” Horris said, after a moment’s thought. “Trust me, most of the folks here have to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau gave a little nod and a muttered ‘yeah’, but Fjord’s eyes narrowed a little. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you feel safe here?” he asked. “I noticed your hood was up when you approached us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Horris was already shaking his head. “Just precautions. Not a lot of business happens here that you won’t get mingled in unless you were looking. So I just stay put.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll send word,” Fjord promised. “It was good to see you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Horris gave a little nod. “You as well. If you pass by the Drowned Nest, hopefully we could have a drink.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tavern, they eventually found, was in the Midway Docks, not to be confused with the Drydocks, which were about the entire thing in this entire swamp that could, with a certain generosity of spirit, be described as ‘dry’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took them a while to find it, and not just because they had to sell the troll heart first, and discovered along the way that apparently Mollymauk really would flirt with </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone</span>
  </em>
  <span>, even sweaty, prickly dwarven shopkeepers with mould growing in their beards. The thought shouldn’t have given Caleb a curl of vicious, self-directed satisfaction - </span>
  <em>
    <span>see, it’s only how he talks, he’d act that way with anyone, even people as revolting as that, as revolting as you</span>
  </em>
  <span> - but it had, and he’d felt Mollymauk’s answering flare of annoyance, just as sharp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, the Drowned Nest, once they got there, utterly failed to live up to its name by being relatively drier than the Keystone Pub and, while not very much more welcoming, at least not collapsing in on itself. Well, not that Caleb could see, anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d ordered four rooms again, and for some reason Fjord had kept casting pleading looks in Caleb’s direction all the while the others had been talking him up to the landlady, which made no sense unless he was trying to...what, convey that he’d appreciate a room to himself again so that the two of them could have some privacy? It didn’t sound very much like Fjord, who’d blushed a blotchy sea-green just trying to explain that he’d be willing to accommodate Caleb’s own desire for privacy, if he ever needed it. Well, Caleb’s and Molly’s, theoretically, but that wasn’t happening anytime soon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They ended up settling at a table not far from the bar, where Molly laid out his cards to play some sort of game that Jester eagerly joined in with, only occasionally chiming in as the rest of them agreed that they’d set out north for Shadycreek Run in the morning. Caleb couldn’t make out most of the rules, and wasn’t about to ask. They were still trying to remember what they’d done with their horses, and where the central stables they were looking for were - Jester and Nott had been the only ones to visit it before - when Nott interrupted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Yasha.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha didn’t look up from her cards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yasha?” Nott repeated. “I saw you asking about that book the- the lady had…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That caught Yasha’s attention. “Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott leaned in conspiratorially. “Do you want me to get it for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Yasha set down her cards - Caleb could make out the image of a brightly-painted carousel on the card nearest him - “I would love that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott grinned, showing all her sharp teeth. “All right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly gave a long, sinuous stretch, his back arching back...surely much farther than a humanoid spine should. Had one of his parents been Yuan-Ti? It was, Caleb thought, the only sort of explanation for the way his spine bowed back, pulling up his shirt a little to expose a flash of purple skin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I missed this,” he said happily, more to himself than to the rest of them, his hands locked together above his head, the lantern-light glinting off the ring on his finger. Caleb swallowed, and looked away, over across the bar to where the innkeeper, Uma, was sitting with her book.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-oh, why not. Another round, please!” Molly was saying as Caleb looked back around, and Caleb felt Nott disappear from his side as Uma came over to pour out another round of fine greenish liquor that burned almost as much as the Labenda Throat Grog they’d had at the Keystone Pub, though with an odd, sweet flavour Caleb didn’t recognise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it was just that it had been a long, hard day, or maybe Nott wasn’t taking it seriously, but she wasn’t moving with her usual stealth, and even Fjord’s attempts to flirt with Uma - which Caleb would’ve laid even odds on succeeding, given Fjord’s general...Fjord-ness - didn’t seem to distract her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t meet with much luck either, as himself or, at Jester’s suggestion, using Frumpkin’s eyes - </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>was it that they kept running into cat-haters? Caleb was sure this was disproportionate - only catching a glimpse of a luridly-drawn cover showing a slender half-elven man in black armour and a taller, broader man with dark skin and a braided beard. After Yasha’s attempt, which looked like the lead-in to a protection racket from the sidelines, they were forced to admit defeat. It was a shame, Caleb had been hoping to find new reading material - he’d read </span>
  <em>
    <span>Courting of the Crick</span>
  </em>
  <span> cover to cover now, more often than he cared to think of, and...well, leisure reading was a luxury, of course, but...he had missed it, more than he realised. So had Yasha, it seemed like, though...Caleb was not very good at tact, but he suspected </span>
  <em>
    <span>Courting of the Crick</span>
  </em>
  <span> was not the book for her in any case.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord cleared his throat. “Well, in the morning, we'll go for the horses and the carriage, and perhaps it's time we turn in.” He finished his drink and looked around. “So, uh. Room arrangements? Same as at the Keystone, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m in with Caleb again,” Nott said firmly, bristling a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord paused. “Uh...you sure about that? I just...you know, sometimes adults...uh...need their privacy, and Caleb...might want to bunk up with Molly again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t,” Caleb said quickly. “I am very happy to share with Nott.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And Kiri and I can share,” Jester put in quickly. “Because, you know...it was nice, with three of us,” she added, looking at Beauregard, “But a little cramped, and, you know, you might want a bit  more room…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fine by me.” Beauregard cleared her throat. “So.  Uh. Me and Yasha, then? That’s cool. Is that cool?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have shared rooms before,” Yasha said earnestly. “Well. Mostly tents. But sometimes rooms. I promise I do not snore.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard brightened, and Caleb hid a smile in his scarf at the look on her face. Maybe this would give her the confidence she needed to finally make the move.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cool,” she said. “Cool, cool, cool. Uh...looking forward to it...uh...roomie?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That just leaves me and Fjord,” Molly said brightly. “Here, let me finish this, and I’ll be right up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t know if ‘this’ was his drink or packing away his cards, but either way, what Mollymauk chose to do with his evening from here on out was no business of Caleb’s. It had been a long, awful, filthy day, and even Caleb wanted a turn in the washroom after all that, at least enough to wipe off the worst of the muck and get back to a level of grime at which he at least felt reasonably human.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was on his way out of the washroom when he ran into Molly in the hallway, coming through from the bar with a look like the cat that had caught the pigeon.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look cheerful,” Caleb said, and winced at how much like an accusation he made it sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk grinned. “Oh, well. I’ve had a windfall. None of you tried bribery?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...the book?” Mollymauk prodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” Caleb paused. “So, you know what it is…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Couldn’t tell you. Condition of finding out.” Mollymauk grinned, and flicked his tail at Caleb. “Tell you what, I’ll find you a copy once we’re back in Zadash. I still owe you a trip to a second-hand bookstore, as I remember it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt his face heat. “That...I told you that was- was not necessary, Mollymauk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s tail whisked from side to side. “Does everything have to be ‘necessary’, with you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...</span>
  <em>
    <span>ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, usually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s mouth twisted, and Caleb could feel the frustration humming through him twice over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, then you have </span>
  <em>
    <span>miraculously </span>
  </em>
  <span>converted me to the wonders of the written word,” Mollymauk lied, forcing a smile that didn’t show any of his fangs. “And I insist on acquiring a copy of...what our host for the evening is reading...to practice with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ask Yasha,” Caleb said shortly, brushing past Mollymauk towards the door nearest the short, shallow flight of steps down to the bar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not really a bookshop person. Or...a shopping person, honestly. Too many people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused, his hand on the doorknob. “...I do not care for people either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you do like second-hand bookshops. And since the Chastity’s Nook ended up being a waste of your time, why not try somewhere else?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. It was...true, more-or-less. He would do better looking in a poorer district, where Oremid Hass was a bit less likely to take an interest - he’d thought a smut shop even in the Tri-Spires would be beneath the Archmage’s notice, but hadn’t reckoned on the fact that no-one in the Tri-Spires, had probably ever bought a thing second-hand in their lives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We...will probably not be in Zadash for very long…” he hedged. “I thought...There is no plan yet, but if we are avoiding the cities to avoid conscription, and in Zadash, where we are still known…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can spare an afternoon to resupply before heading...wherever we’re heading. Out of the Empire, would be my vote,” Molly added, “Only so many places we can go without </span>
  <em>
    <span>someone </span>
  </em>
  <span>noticing us, after all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb snorted. “What, the motley, technicolour group of strangers of whom news has been spreading in whispers, apparently, since we arrived, enough to reach even Horris, who keeps to himself? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ja</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I think we have made ourselves...more conspicuous than I was expecting.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All the more reason to get out while we still can, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And not waste time on shopping trips while we’re there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly stepped back, his hands going up. “You have a point. But...you know, there are bookshops everywhere. If you ever change your mind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb’s hand tightened a little on the doorknob. He looked away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will remember that,” he said stiffly and, feeling Mollymauk’s eyes on his back at every second, went in to bed.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>In which: Hupperdook happens, Caleb is drunk, touch-starved and clingier than he'll want to admit in the morning, I use too much German that I don't understand, and also attempt to write drunkenness despite having never been able to tolerate the taste of alcohol long enough to experience it.<br/>Hopefully, it's going to turn out okay.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It wasn’t that Molly had never been happier to leave a place than he was to leave Berleben - he could think of at least four towns across the Empire he’d disliked more and which hadn’t even had the novelty of being half-sunk in a swamp to recommend them - but he had to admit, the place had started to pall after a couple of days in a no-horse town with nothing to do but drink to pass the time away. It was almost enjoyable to see the swamp fading away behind them as they rattled back south to join up with whichever road they ended up taking to Shadycreek Run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Already, there were a couple of opinions on that:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott had the map out, comically oversized in her small, clawed hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, we have to go around these mountains,” she said, pointing at a cluster of little white-capped triangles. Molly had never especially liked or trusted maps. He’d always felt, at some deep, instinctive level, that they sold the landscape short. “We can either go to the east, past Hupperdook,” Nott went on. “Because we’re trying to get to Nogvurot, right? Up there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, we’re going to Shadycreek Run,” Jester corrected, leaning over to look over Nott’s shoulder at the map, forcing Molly to grab for the reins before they lost them..</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, right.” Nott rustled the map. “So, we could go around Hupperdook way, or we could go Rexxentrum way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we should go Rexxentrum,” Molly said, looking up at the road ahead. “Just because there’s an </span>
  <em>
    <span>army </span>
  </em>
  <span>marching that direction.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a longer route, sure, but that...might not be an entirely bad thing. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We went north to Shadycreek Run and we started the Tomb Takers</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Cree had said. Not like any of them would still be hanging around, or they’d’ve found Molly right out of the grave, but what if...it was stupid to worry about it, it wasn’t like seeing Cree had brought anything flooding back to him, but if it did...if it did…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were going to Shadycreek Run either way, right? Not like a couple extra days were going to make that big a difference.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Besides. There </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>an army marching the Xhorhasian border right now, and it’d defeat the point of getting out of Zadash to avoid conscription if they ended up meeting it on the road instead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester frowned. “But Rexxentrum is the capital!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“That place is very busy,” Caleb agreed, in a painfully neutral sort of tone, and Molly felt a curl of wariness from the other end of the bond. Shit. He’d- Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>forgotten</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but...of course Caleb wouldn’t be keen on going back. But there was nothing saying they had to stop in Rexxentrum for more than a night - maybe not even that, depending on timing - and if they kept their heads down...as much as they could, anyway...they might slip through mostly unnoticed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should probably stay clear and go to Hupperdook,” Jester went on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve been up there, haven’t you, Caleb?” Nott asked, looking worried, and something guilty twisted in the pit of Molly’s stomach.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Caleb agreed, looking up from his journal in the back of the cart. “But there’s a war brewing, and that place is the centre of it all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott frowned. “But you might know some folks who could help us?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Where </span>
  <em>
    <span>from</span>
  </em>
  <span>, exactly, Molly wondered. People didn’t live like Caleb did - like Caleb had done - if they had any way of </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>doing that they could fall back on. And...why would anyone want to go back into that pit, if they had another choice?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha, who had been riding level with the cart, reined her horse in a little closer so she could chime in:</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“That man, Trent Ikithon or whatever, is in Rexxentrum.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. “...is he </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” he asked, frowning. “I thought...wasn’t he just in Zadash?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, yeah, but…” Yasha shifted. “I don’t know that he’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>stay </span>
  </em>
  <span>in Zadash…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That Trent guy?” Jester butted in. “The one from the party? Because he seemed, you know, kinda…” she made a face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau, who’d been riding on the other side of the cart, chose then to join in:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, is in where? Rexxentrum?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha looked faintly confused. “Yeah. Don’t you remember? When we talked to him he said if we wanted to, you know, meet up with him to talk more, he was in Rexxentrum.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Second-hand fear bolted through Molly’s body, and against his will his grip tightened on the reins, slowing the horses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought we were on a timetable to get things done for the Gentleman,” Caleb said, before Molly could jump in.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Yeah,” Molly agreed, taking the out. “And- I mean...is this guy someone we even want to talk to? He seemed pretty suspicious about Yasha, this could be some kind of trap…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha blinked. “...if he wanted to arrest me as a spy, he could have just done it at the party, though?” she pointed out. “I don’t...don’t need to talk to him, but if that’s something we, as a group, want to do, then…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s say no,” Beau said quickly. “I mean...uh. Hupperdook’s gotta be quicker, right?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“And we’re trying to be sly,” Fjord agreed, from his place on the leading horse, still sounding a little confused. “We want to avoid eyes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester straightened up. “Tell you what! We’ll do Hupperdook on the way and Rexxentrum on the way back!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or  not at all, if we don’t feel like it,” Molly added. “Plenty of other places to see! What about Grimgolir, I hear Grimgolir is supposed to be nice! Lots of…” he fumbled. “Uh…” Lightless caves full of monsters, was most of what he’d heard, and really the whole reason he’d remembered the name in the first place. Which admittedly made it right up this group’s alley, but it wasn’t exactly something Molly was eager to subject himself to again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fjord actually looked around to frown at him, which didn’t seem like best practice, so far as riding was concerned. “Grimgolir’s even nearer the Front than Hupperdook.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And yet full of interest!” Molly lied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau shrugged. “I’ve heard some pretty crazy stories through the grapevine about, uh, what goes on in Hupperdook,” she offered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a beat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What goes on in Hupperdook?” Nott asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly, on the other hand, brought out the big guns. “I don’t believe you’ve ever heard a crazy story about anything happening anywhere.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- What goes on there?” Yasha was asking, watching Beau in honest, and entirely unwarranted, fascination.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you challenging me?” Beau, half-drowning Yasha out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly grinned, wide and showing as many teeth as he could manage. “I’m challenging you for details.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, Beau couldn’t take that lying down. “So, all right. City’s, like, got a lot of gnomes, right, and they’re like filled with- with like industry, and they work all the time, but at night, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>party</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sounded a bit fake from where Molly was standing, if only because if there really was a city out there that partied that hard, it sounded like somewhere he ought to have seen by now...though if they were already having that good a time on their own, maybe the circus wouldn’t have seen particularly good business there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gnome parties?” Jester summarised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau nodded, warming to her topic, and gesturing to emphasise the point. “Work hard, party hard. It’s what that city’s all about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And they live in mushroom houses,” Jester threw in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I don’t know about the mushroom houses thing, but I’ve just heard some crazy- They have ragers, like, every night!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sounded like Molly’s kind of town, if she wasn’t just bullshitting. The world was just conspiring against him now, to make him hope for Beau to be proved right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve heard gnome parties are the craziest kind,” Yasha agreed. Molly’s head snapped around because where- where had she heard that? Why had she never </span>
  <em>
    <span>told </span>
  </em>
  <span>him about it if she’d heard that?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott squinted up at her. “Are you making this up?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, not at all,” Beau said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>making this up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester was squinting at her too, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not to believe it either, but then her face broke into a wide, excited, beaming smile.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s amazing!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau chopped at the air with one arm, “I’m just saying, I’ve had some shady friends.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>The noise Jester made at that didn’t quite sound like it should’ve come from a humanoid throat. Maybe a particularly terrified or excited sheep. Possibly one of those long-legged woolly beasts you occasionally saw in pictures of faraway places, like sheep but taller and differently shaped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hupperdook it is!” said Fjord, sounding resigned. Resigned. To partying. Truly, Molly would never understand this man.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Apparently just in case Molly needed another incentive to go, of course, Beau brought up the fact that this place apparently had the highest import and export rates for illicit substances in the Empire, which...also sounded pretty great, if Molly was honest. Really, it was going to be a terrible disappointment when they got there and it turned out Beau had been bullshitting this whole time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was good to be back on the road again. Zadash had been good while it lasted, and Berleben...well, it had novelty value. And shady apothecaries. And trolls, though those were kind of a mixed blessing. But sticking around in one place too long was just asking for trouble, the way things were going now, and anyway...Molly hadn’t seen nearly enough of the world yet to be tired of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d be heading north on the Gravelway Path, just as soon as they hit the crossroads. It wasn’t a route the circus had taken often - it might’ve started out up in Shadycreek Run, but they hadn’t been up that way since Molly was new - and he only knew the roads by name thanks to the very, very few times he’d pulled waggon-driving duty and people had just somehow expected him to know what that meant. He had, after that came out, been taken </span>
  <em>
    <span>off </span>
  </em>
  <span>waggon duty in pretty short order, which had been more-or-less fine with him. Apparently there was some kind of market set up at this crossroads, which was...normal enough, you got a lot of these sorts of places, Molly had found the material for the lining of his coat at a stall at one of these little roadside markets...and they were on the lookout for diamonds, just in case any of them got killed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because, of course, for someone to come back from the dead, you needed a three-hundred gold piece diamond. The gods, it seemed, favoured the filthy stinking rich. Or thieves. Molly would much rather it were thieves. He wasn’t even sure how that worked - did it not count if you got a little five-finger discount, or was it just ‘something you had paid three hundred gold for’? Magic was confusing and Molly did not understand it. Probably Caleb would, if Molly asked him, but...honestly, Molly was still smarting a bit from that set-down back at the Drowned Nest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t- He hadn’t even meant anything by it, was the thing. He’d just...wanted to see Caleb look the way he had in Chastity’s Nook again, when, even when he hadn’t found what he’d been looking for, the sight of all those books had sent a ripple of something soft and pleased and hungry through the bond. Molly liked it when his friends were happy, that was allowed, right? It had to be. And maybe a bookshop wouldn’t make Caleb happy in the long run, but it’d give him a little rush of joy in the moment, the way he got when he found a new spell or worked out something new and got to share it with them. Caleb could do with a few more of those. And it wasn’t like it was entirely selfless, either - Molly was...getting used to it, but that low background hum of guilt and fear and misery wore on you, even knowing that it wasn’t anyone’s fault and it would only be cruel to complain about it, and make Caleb feel even guiltier. All the same...there was a line between just...the ordinary guilt and grief and pain that Caleb carried around with him, and what using his fire did to him. And yet, he used it anyway. If Caleb wanted to punish himself that was- well, it wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but it wasn’t- wasn’t something Molly could do anything about. But it wasn’t just himself he was punishing, now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He got- He got that it wasn’t Caleb’s fault, he did. All that shit...it wasn’t his fault, any more than it was Yasha’s fault that her tribe had been absolute </span>
  <em>
    <span>dicks </span>
  </em>
  <span>for her from start to finish, and Molly didn’t have enough words to convey how much worse than that they had been. Awful things had been done to him, and they’d made him do awful things in his turn, and none of that was ever going to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>right</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but- Well, it wasn’t as though Molly and ‘right’ had ever had much more than a nodding acquaintance. He just- He hadn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>asked </span>
  </em>
  <span>for any of this. He hadn’t asked for someone else’s baggage taking up space in his head, had done everything he could to avoid it-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb hadn’t asked for it either, of course. Not any of it. It had been his old teacher who’d decided he’d make a good weapon, and Molly who’d kissed him in the gnoll mine and opened up this link between them. Somehow, that didn’t make the guilty twinge of resentment go away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They reached the crossroads after two more days of steady rain. It was almost a disappointment to see only three tents, rather than the cluster of ten or twenty or even more that Nott had led him to expect - a whole mobile town of market stalls to explore. Still, three tents were better than none at all, and after three days of alternately driving and riding, a chance to stretch his legs and see something that wasn’t just more fields and farms and meadows wasn’t to be sniffed at. Besides...logically, someone around here must have a spare tarpaulin to throw over the cart and keep them out of the worst of the rain, because if Molly had to sleep in the mud under the cart </span>
  <em>
    <span>one </span>
  </em>
  <span>more time to keep from being rained on, he was going to do something regrettable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, the first thing Caleb did was send Frumpkin out to scout things out for them, and Molly managed to pre-empt Beau by being the closest person available for Caleb to grab onto to steady himself. Caleb’s hand was colder than ever on Molly’s shoulder, chill even through Molly’s shirt and jerkin and coat as Caleb muttered about bone jewellery and furs and fruits and...huh. General repair stuff, the necessities of the road. Probably tents and tarps as well. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Damn </span>
  </em>
  <span>these people for forcing Molly to be the responsible one. He just wanted to buy a few extra horn ornaments and maybe a few more rings to make the magic one a bit less obvious. Instead, he was going to be stuck spending his share of their pay on tents or sleeping in the mud all the way to Shadycreek Run. </span>
  <em>
    <span>This </span>
  </em>
  <span>was what came of people locking up Gustav! It meant that Molly had to be the adult now! Gods, he missed the circus. Nobody ever expected him to be the responsible one in the circus. Of course, no-one was selling hoops for a frame to cover the cart with, but that was something to look out for in Hupperdook. Possibly even with someone to help put one up, since while Molly would usually consider himself pretty crafty with this sort of thing, it wasn’t like he’d ever had to build a covered waggon before. The circus had already had all theirs by the time he came along, and they’d always bought replacements either already covered or for carts that didn’t need to be covered in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t add more than a couple hours to their journey - maybe three, counting Jester’s sudden realisation that Kiri needed more warm things and they needed to turn back and get her some, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>clearly </span>
  </em>
  <span>the cold was the most dangerous thing about their whole situation here - which was kind of a mixed blessing in Molly’s book. On the one hand, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>on a time crunch here, which was a new and not especially enjoyable experience, and the sooner they got to Shadycreek Run the sooner they could get out of Shadycreek Run without running into anyone else who wanted to reminisce about the good old days with the previous arsehole in charge of Molly’s body. On the other...the longer Molly could put off that risk, the better, so far as he was concerned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were still a couple days away from Hupperdook, and Molly didn’t know how far they were from Shadycreek Run - it wasn’t exactly something it had ever been his responsibility to keep an eye on. In his experience, you got to places when you got to them, and if it was a few days later or earlier than planned, that only really mattered for holidays and public fairs. And, while Molly was generally all in favour of catching one of those wherever he could, it had just been Harvest Close, and if they were still on the way to Hupperdook by Civilisation’s Dawn they clearly had much, much bigger problems than just missing a festival.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t an especially eventful journey, apart from their second run-in with the same gang of really, </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>terrible bandits they’d had a run-in with outside Alfield, who didn’t appear to have stopped and rethought their lives, but at least had developed enough wits to figure out that letting the syphilis-afflicted, manticore-head-fucking maniacs who’d burnt their previous leader alive go by without a fight and with whatever they cared to take off them was clearly a better policy than the one they’d started with. Really, Molly just felt bad for them. Their basic banditry skills had not grown any less embarrassingly awful since their last run-in, and that was saying something given that the Nein had also been somewhat embarrassingly not-on-the-ball for that particular encounter. Which...may have been, just the slightest bit, Molly’s own fault. It had been a very boring watch, all right? He’d been drowsing for most of it. He hadn’t exactly expected to be set upon by the world’s least competent highway robbers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, at least Yasha had met them now, which sort-of made up for her not getting to be there last time. Molly had been pretty pleased with how he handled things that first time, it was good to know he hadn’t lost his touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, they each went on their way, the bandits with a new set of leather armour and the Mighty Nein with the cover from off the bandits’ cart and a couple of spare blankets,, since their would-be robbers hadn’t really had anything worth stealing. Hopefully they’d figure out some other way to bring in money, because they really weren’t very good at this banditry thing. Baking seemed like a good option. Maybe merchant trading. Or just traipsing around fighting whatever needed fought the way the Nein were doing, though maybe that wasn’t exactly much of an improvement on the banditry so far as skill-set was concerned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They left the last of the bandits where he lay - pantsless, but still reasonably-armed, with flowers in his hair and smelling of lavender, which was in Molly’s expert opinion the best possible way to wake up - and by morning, when Jester doubled back to check, he was gone, which was probably a good sign for his survival, at least in the short term. Maybe he’d start over, find some new people, turn his life around. Stranger things had happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hupperdook, it turned out, was nestled right up against the mountains, and mountains, as it turned out, were one of those things the maps had really not done justice. Molly was nearly hanging off the side of the cart, craning his neck to look up at them, his heart in his throat, whenever it wasn’t his turn at the reins for all of the two days it took them from where they’d left the bandits to the gates of Hupperdook. There was something about them- The sheer scale of the peaks, the barren rocks and the quality of the light...Molly wasn’t a poet, he couldn’t put it into words. Probably someone had, at some point - it seemed like everything had been written down somewhere, sometimes - but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. It was the sort of landscape that made you feel tiny under the heavens, he didn’t know how anyone managed to live right next to this, every day, without just spending every hour gaping up at it. Maybe that was where all Ornna’s snooty remarks about ‘slack-jawed yokels’ had come from, but Molly was feeling pretty slack-jawed himself right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You seem very distracted, Mr Mollymauk,” Caleb said, after the second time Molly was nearly  jolted out of the cart, he was leaning out so far.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly beamed at him. “The circus didn’t get up to the mountains all that often,” he admitted, a little breathless. “We mostly swung wide. The roads are better that way, and there’s less wear and tear on the horses.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Caleb looked almost confused, but then he nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja, I suppose...it is difficult, when you are pulling that many carts. That’s probably why we never…” he broke off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s heart twisted oddly at the look on Caleb’s face, the pang of old pain through the bond. Shit, shit, shit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t know you’d seen the mountains before,” he said inanely, trying to steer them onto safer ground.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb glanced away. “I...yes, once or twice. That is,” Caleb stumbled. “I...I have been up, into the peaks on...on  more than one occasion, but those were not...it is not something I would like to talk about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fine,” Molly said hastily. “Sorry I asked! We can just...not talk about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t want to imagine what Trent Ikithon had had Caleb doing, up in those mountains, in this landscape that didn’t seem to care whether anyone lived or died.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...thank you, Mollymauk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was, at least, a new topic of conversation, and Molly seized on it with both hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, you can just call me ‘Molly’,” he said, with a poor attempt at casualness. “I think we’re good enough friends for that now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb stared at him, looking faintly bewildered. “...it is hardly difficult to say the whole thing,” he said, a little awkwardly. “It is...how did you come by it? I...did you choose it for yourself? It- It is not a Common name, that I know of…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly grinned, a little sheepishly. “Gustav picked it,” he admitted. “They were just calling me ‘MT’ before that, because...y’know. To be honest with you, I think he just...saw a mollymawk and happened to be drinking tea when my paperwork needed done, and that was it. I liked it a lot better than any of his other suggestions, so Mollymauk I became.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...a mollymawk?” Caleb repeated, frowning at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “‘s a kind of bird, I think. They’re meant to be lucky for sailors on long voyages, but I don’t...don’t ask me why, it was just a poem or something that Desmond liked. He used to recite a lot of those to me, in the early days,” he added. “Because I wasn’t talking much, and couldn’t tell him to fuck off and bother someone else. Some idiot went and shot the bird, cursed their whole ship…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Der Albatros</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” he muttered. “I...I think I see. We- We shall have to be careful that no-one shoots you, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Tell that to our old friends the Syphilis Bandits,” Molly said, shrugging. “But I’m none the worse for wear, Mr Caleb.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He watched, delighted, as Caleb’s ears turned pink again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed. “Where- You were a long way inland when we first met, where was this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “I don’t really know. Never paid much attention to town names and so on. If I needed to know, it’d probably come up sooner or later, and no-one can keep all those little villages straight. It was cold, there was a salt lake that was supposed to connect to the sea…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Kaltenloch?” Caleb asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I guess so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Up towards Icehaven, then. The- the northern Zemni Fields.” There was a little furrow between Caleb’s brows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somewhere you’ve been?” Molly asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked away. “Not...not in a very long time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ikithon again, that meant, and the little twist of second-hand sorrow in the pit of Molly’s stomach just proved it. Was there any memory of Caleb’s that he didn’t touch somehow?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, you know, this is touching,” Beau said from up on the bench, where she’d taken a turn at driving for the day, after Jester expressed an interest in learning to ride under Yasha’s tutelage, with Kiri perched on the saddle in front of her. “But it’s after noon, which makes it </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>turn to drive.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh-” Molly looked up. Yes, there was the sun, almost directly overhead, but…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...You couldn't have given me </span>
  <em>
    <span>five more minutes</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” he demanded. They’d been having a </span>
  <em>
    <span>moment</span>
  </em>
  <span>, dammit!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I gave you a whole extra hour!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja, that is true,” Caleb agreed, the traitor. “It is nearly ten past one in the afternoon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly groaned. “I’m being conspired against under my own canvas!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Our canvas,” Beau corrected. “Since we </span>
  <em>
    <span>all </span>
  </em>
  <span>stole it off those bandits.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I feel like paying for a cover should count for something here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau snorted. “Yeah, no. That’s not how this works. Get up here before I drag you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It would’ve served her right if Molly had sent the cart careening off the road in his distraction, but that really didn’t seem fair on the horses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, just another in a long list of very mixed blessings, it turned out when they got there after two more days of watching the mountains rise and overshadow the whole landscape that Beau </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>been bullshitting about Hupperdook, which was objectively pretty great, but also meant that Molly had to admit that she’d been right about something. Hopefully nobody was going to mention that, because if he actually had to admit to being wrong about something </span>
  <em>
    <span>Beau </span>
  </em>
  <span>had gotten right, Molly might actually die of shame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d found a guide almost right out of - or in through - the gates, and a much more likeable and useful one than Febron had ever been. There was an actual thousand-foot-high waterfall just...in the middle of the city, like that. Also, admittedly, quite a lot of weapons, many of which looked like they’d be capable of doing an awful lot of damage to anything that got in their way, but since Molly wasn’t planning on getting in their way he was willing enough to give them a wide berth while looking for the fun stuff. And </span>
  <em>
    <span>what </span>
  </em>
  <span>a lot of fun stuff there was to choose from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were fireworks going off overhead, and Molly almost wanted to just lean back against the driver’s bench next to Fjord and stare up as green and blue and scarlet sparks exploded against an overcast evening sky. Except, if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to see the bustle of the street, people - mostly gnomes, but a few dwarves, humans and half-elves as well - dashing back and forth, as if they couldn’t wait to throw themselves into what this night had to hold. A city after his own heart - Molly thought he was going to like it here. There was a maypole in the main square, the sort you sometimes saw for village festivals in the spring that were very carefully never called Wild’s Grandeur, and baskets of cloth flowers. There was music playing - several different kinds of music, from different directions, like the whole city, maybe even the whole mountain was coming alive with it. There were firecrackers on sale, flower crowns and necklaces, and if they didn’t stay here at least a </span>
  <em>
    <span>couple </span>
  </em>
  <span>of days before moving on towards Shadycreek Run and whatever business the Gentleman wanted them to clear up for this Mardun person, Molly might actually riot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Blushing Tankard was not, in spite of the name and all reasonable expectation, a particularly remarkable inn. Molly had been hoping for at least a few lewd paintings or a racy inn-sign. But it was warm, no part of it appeared to be underground, and they were willing to offer free stabling for the cart and horses, and what more, really, could a party of adventurers looking for a strings-free night of revelry ask for?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester laid claim to the piano almost as soon as they were in, while the rest of them made for the bar, where the innkeep turned out to be a dwarven woman with the best eye make-up Molly had seen in his two short years of life, hands down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t hard, getting four rooms for the night - apparently Hupperdook didn’t see nearly as many travellers as the constant party atmosphere seemed to deserve - while Jester was finally chased off her piano by the original pianist just in time for drinks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” the landlady said, tucking something away in her belt. “Are you looking for something strong or something strong?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, this was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>Molly’s kind of town.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Amaze me!” he said, once he finally managed to close his mouth, leaning almost all the way across the bar. “Baffle me! Make me forget where I am!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman smiled slow, leaning forwards. “Ooh. I like you. You’re colourful.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Molly grinned. “Bless you, you’re colourful yourself,” he agreed. “I love everything you’re wearing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her smile widened, and she let out something that might’ve passed for a giggle in poor lighting. “Thank you! First one’s on me, how about that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bless you,” Molly repeated fervently. “I’ll happily pay for hers as well,” he added, pointing at Beau, “Because I want to drink her </span>
  <em>
    <span>under the fucking table</span>
  </em>
  <span> tonight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hold that ‘till later on! That event’s not ‘till later tonight!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...Winter’s Crest had come early.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What happens later tonight?” he asked eagerly. “Other than more drink? Is there like-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She leaned back, her smile growing wider still, her eyes familiarly half-lidded. “Is this your first time here?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>It was, but that was never a good question to be asked. “Are we that obvious?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughed. “A bit. Well, ah- We have some performances going on, and then we have our contest. Our weekly, uh, Hour of Honour. So, just don’t- don’t drink too much if you’re looking to compete.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She popped the top button on her blouse as she was finishing, which was as clear an indication of, if not interest, at least not </span>
  <em>
    <span>opposition </span>
  </em>
  <span>as Molly had ever seen. He had to admit, he didn’t usually have this much luck in bars without having to work for it. Please, </span>
  <em>
    <span>please </span>
  </em>
  <span>don’t let her turn out to be another tail fetishist. There was only so much yanking the poor thing could stand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While she was doing that, though, she also produced a bottle of something thick and sweet and as red as the bottle it came in, and Molly couldn’t resist putting out a finger, when she offered him a tiny glass, just to dip and have a taste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barkeep’s eyes followed his hand for a moment, and then she reached up, re-buttoned her blouse, and straightened a little - still leaning on the bar, but not half as far as she had been. Molly blinked at her as he sucked his finger to taste - this stuff was </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span>, rich and sweet and strong, with a burn that went all the way down - and she folded her arms. Okay. Do not continue flirting unless he wanted a slap, good to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Shoot or sip?” he asked, straightening up a little himself, because he really didn’t feel like being slapped tonight, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>especially </span>
  </em>
  <span>not in front of Beau.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your choice,” the barkeep said, more briskly. “‘s good either way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly could hear Beau snickering. “Yeah, not that it hasn’t been fun to see Molly get his ego crushed,” she said, nudging him aside. “But could I get one of the same here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right, that’ll be five silver pieces.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought he paid for me- I thought you paid for me,” Beau thumped him lightly on the shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I did pay for you!” Molly protested, and slapped down a gold. “Keep the tip as well,” he said brightly, just to show there were no hard feelings.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, my goodness, thank you!” She was smiling again, at least, but there was nothing flirtatious in it, and so Molly gave it up for the evening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s kinda medicinal,” Beau said, after downing her whole shot at once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly considered that. “Challenge accepted,” he replied, and followed suit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>On the second taste, the liquor turned out to be something like a honey mead, thick and sweet and overpowering, and if not the best thing Molly had ever tasted, it at least made the top five.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was coming in now, Molly knew that without even looking up, but he looked around anyway and waved anyway at a resigned-looking Fjord and a red-faced and spluttering Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The crowd was getting even livelier now, with at least one person attempting a full-on chandelier swing. Molly might’ve been tempted to try it himself, if he hadn’t already decided he didn’t particularly want to face the wrath of that dwarven innkeeper. At least, not until he’d had as much of that honey mead as he wanted for the evening. Shame, he was hoping this’d be another place like the Swinging Chandelier where it was downright encouraged to have a go. They might have to find another tavern for that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha, who had been looking uncomfortable more-or-less since the moment the factory whistles sounded, volunteered to stay upstairs with Kiri, once they’d sorted out a table, scared off a couple of locals who’d been giving Rissa shit, Fjord had utterly failed to hire a companion for the night thanks to Jester’s best efforts at putting off any woman in a hundred-miles radius - that girl should either make a move or get out of the way, life was too short for pining and you couldn’t call dibs on people - and Beau had been kicked in the face by a gnomish dancer whom Molly </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>should’ve tipped higher.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll bring you back a flower crown in the morning,” Molly promised, keeping pace with Yasha as she and Kiri reached the stairs, Kiri perched on one of Yasha’s shoulders like a doll.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha’s brow furrowed. “They...they just looked like cloth, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think they are,” Molly admitted, “But it’ll look good on you anyway, and this way you can keep it a bit longer. Just as a for-yourself thing,” he added quickly, lest she thought he was suggesting she bring </span>
  <em>
    <span>fake </span>
  </em>
  <span>flowers back to Zuala’s grave. Nothing against them, they were a pretty neat innovation, but it was the real thing or nothing for Zuala, apparently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I would like that,” Yasha admitted, rather shyly. “If you can get one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re all over the place,” Molly promised. “I’ll bring back two, we can match.” Or, well, complement, at least. Matching would just be boring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay.” Yasha offered him a real, small smile. “Have a good night, Molly.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And what a night it was!</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Molly had never seen fireworks before. He’d heard about them - Ornna always lamented not being able to set them off in a tent, even if the circus could’ve afforded them, which, Desmond usually reminded her, they couldn’t - but he’d never </span>
  <em>
    <span>seen </span>
  </em>
  <span>them before. There was music, there was alcohol flowing it seemed from every door, there were stalls selling silk flowers...which, admittedly, seemed to have been all bought out already. Served him right for wanting to get a drink first but</span>
  <em>
    <span> come on</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he was a tiefling on a mission here!</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He ran back into Beau and Nott on his way back towards the Blushing Tankard, alone and without a single flower crown to show for his efforts, and got a sip of decent-enough wine that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>hadn’t got in the Blushing Tankard for his troubles. They ran into Caleb and Jester just a minute or two later.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-it is hard to believe,” Caleb was saying when they got there. “But I was able to do- I danced the waltz, and, er, the tarantella…it’s been many years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, you should show me sometime!” Jester replied eagerly, all but bouncing in place now. “Because I want to see it!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“I am very much out of practice, and-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could do it when nobody’s watching, okay? Other than me, I mean.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could see you as a waltzer,” Molly put in, because he could. “That makes sense.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was one of the more sedate ones, if Molly remembered right. He couldn’t picture Caleb doing the tarantella, though. He’d just have to demonstrate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It does, a little bit,” Caleb agreed stiffly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should show us!” Jester said eagerly. “Molly, do you know-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “I learnt the basics of a few dances. The waltz...wasn’t that complicated, if it’s the one I’m thinking of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester clapped her hands together, and Molly realised, too late, what sort of trap he’d just stepped into.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then you can help! I had dancing lessons growing up, but since you know already, I won’t have to demonstrate…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wouldn’t say ‘know’,” Molly said hastily. “I mean...I’ve seen it done a few times, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then Caleb can show you!” Jester’s grin widened, her eyes snapping with mischief.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed. “As- As I was saying, I am many years out of practice, and if- if Mollymauk wants to learn, maybe you should teach him, as you have so- so many unexpected talents, apparently.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do have a lot of skills,” Jester agreed brightly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. “What are three more?”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That </span>
  </em>
  <span>got the conversation redirected. Fjord was not going to know what hit him, if he ever realised he was being hit on at all. They even managed to find a bookshop and a flower-seller before the Hour of Honour got started. Granted, the bookshop was closed and the flower-seller didn’t do crowns, but half of one was better than none, and it wasn’t as if Molly couldn’t make a crown for himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The evening just got better with the Hour of Honour. First, they won. Second, Beau was the only one of their team who </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>won their bout, which was a double win in Molly’s book. And, of course, the only way to celebrate their drinking victory was with yet more drinking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was singing to himself somewhere nearby, to no particular tune-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, the Mighty Nein is the Mighty Nein. The Mighty Nein is the Mighty Nein. The mightiest nine that ever neined!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-and Molly felt...</span>
  <em>
    <span>light</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Like he hadn’t realised just what a weight all that guilt and grief and fear really was until, all at once, it was gone. Or- Not gone, not entirely, but...lessened. As if Caleb was too drunk, now, to think about all the reasons why he didn’t deserve a night like this. It made something twist painfully in Molly’s chest, and he ended up ordering another shot of the honey mead just to get the taste of that thought out of his mouth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was on the barstool next to his and Molly was drunk enough that it felt like a good idea to sling an arm around her shoulders and hug her against his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nott! I’m so proud of you! I'm so proud of you! So well done!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott leaned into him - did this mean she liked him now? Molly’s life would be </span>
  <em>
    <span>so </span>
  </em>
  <span>much easier if she liked him now - “You were </span>
  <em>
    <span>great </span>
  </em>
  <span>out there!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You- You too,” Molly agreed. Well, he wasn’t slurring yet, at least. “I didn’t think- Where do you </span>
  <em>
    <span>put </span>
  </em>
  <span>it all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bottomless pit!” Nott crowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was music striking up somewhere nearby, couples whirling around in what looked to Molly’s inexpert eye like either a waltz or one of those other dances that all sort of blurred into each other after this many drinks. The ones which were just two people standing in a circle and spinning a lot.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk?” Nott prodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly snapped his fingers. “I’m in.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>He’d never </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually </span>
  </em>
  <span>done this before - not that they hadn’t danced, in the circus, but generally anything with steps more complicated than ‘hold onto your partner and hope for the best’ wasn’t anything they wanted to be doing when there wasn’t an audience to perform for - but he didn’t think he was doing too badly at it, even if he did have to bend nearly double since Nott was adamantly against the idea of being picked up for this. The pace was starting to pick up again now, and it seemed like things were still going well right up until they collided head-on with Caleb and Jester, and how they managed that when two out of four of the dancers could, theoretically, know where the other one was at any given moment was anybody’s guess.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sorry, sorry!” Jester said brightly, grinning a wide and wicked grin. “That was my fault, I wasn’t looking where we were going. So...we have to swap partners now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We do?” Nott asked, blinking up at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sure! Nicodranas tradition! If you smack into another couple while dancing, you have to change partners.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was squinting. “I...I do not think that is an actual rule…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have you ever been to Nicodranas?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s probably why you don’t know about it, then,” Jester said, which did make a certain amount of sense - not as though Molly knew much of what went on at fancy parties either, other than the example from after the Victory Pit, which hadn’t involved very much dancing at all. “Come on, Nott!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, what-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Nott and Jester were already whirling away, leaving Caleb and Molly standing awkwardly in the middle of a dancefloor while dancing was going on all around them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “Might as well, then,” he said, with as much casualness as he could affect after this much ale. “Am I leading or are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We…” Caleb blinked, and hiccuped. “...It is my turn, I think, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, fine by me,” Molly said hastily, just in case Caleb changed his mind and closed himself off all over again, the way he had in Berleben after Molly had tried to ask him out for an afternoon wandering around second-hand bookstores in Zadash, the single least interesting way to spend time with someone that Molly had ever wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly picked up one of Caleb’s hands in his, and went to put his other hand somewhere in the vicinity of Caleb’s waist, only to find it moved, gently but firmly, to somewhere higher, in the middle of Caleb’s back, as Caleb’s hand settled on his shoulder and spun them out into the dance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was good at this, was Molly’s first, rather muzzy thought. Despite being at least three sheets to the wind with a vague, dreamy sort of look on his face, as if he were half-asleep already, his steps didn’t falter much at all, though even if he had been a bit rusty...well, it wasn’t as though Molly would’ve been able to tell. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester and Nott spun past - Nott didn’t seem to have any trouble with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Jester </span>
  </em>
  <span>picking her up and spinning her around, Molly noticed, with distant grumpiness - and then another couple of gnomes. The waltz felt a lot faster than it had looked from the outside, whirling them halfway around the room until Molly wasn’t sure whether it was his head or the room spinning faster, and only hoped they’d figure it out among themselves. Molly nearly tripped over his feet once, trying to make up the difference between the speed of the music and the speed of the dance, and Caleb broke off and actually laughed, low and soft and barely more than a huff of air, but a laugh nonetheless, and when Molly looked up from getting his feet under control there was an honest-to-gods </span>
  <em>
    <span>smile </span>
  </em>
  <span>on Caleb’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s tail curled. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Do that again!</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, Wulf, Wulf,” Caleb said, half-laughing, his eyes wide and blue and...distant. “You- You haven’t been attending your lessons, you know we’re supposed to be trying to...to…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He trailed off, blinking vaguely, and Molly’s stomach clenched.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How do you know I’m not trying to make you look better by comparison?” he asked, shifting a little to get a firmer grip on Caleb just in case he keeled over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something a little more lucid seemed to come into Caleb’s eyes then and he pulled away, already muttering apologies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“None of that,” Molly said, a bit more loudly than he intended. “Let’s...come on, let’s get you to bed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He heard a giggle from somewhere nearby, and resolutely didn’t look around as he tried to steer Caleb off the dancefloor as best he could when he was starting to feel more than a little wobbly himself. Although...alcohol was </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically </span>
  </em>
  <span>a poison, wasn’t it? Something to look into once he’d got Caleb to bed. Maybe not try it on himself first, he’d need a volunteer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“C’mon,” he repeated, nudging Caleb, whose hand seemed to have become caught in Molly’s coat. “You’ll feel better once you’re lying down.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ich stehe in deiner Macht</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Caleb muttered. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Ich fürchte, Sie haben Entwürfe für meine Tugend</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, come on, upstairs…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was half-collapsed against him by the time they reached the upstairs landing, and Molly just had to let him lean while he tried as many doors as he could to find one that opened at his touch, which meant it was either theirs or whoever had booked it ought to have locked their doors before the drinking started. Yes. He nodded to himself, as wisely as he could, then winced at the way that made his brain feel  like it was being bounced off the inside of his skull.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are...very colourful…” Caleb mumbled into Molly’s shoulder as they stumbled inside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...am, yes...” Molly agreed, blinking down at him and feeling the heat creeping up his neck. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Das ist purpurrot</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Caleb went on, very seriously, petting at the silk of Molly’s coat. “But the rest of you is...very purple. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lila, lila, lila</span>
  </em>
  <span>…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nuzzled his face sleepily into Molly’s shoulder, and tripped over his own feet, sending both of them toppling backwards, landing half-on and half-off the bed which...oh, no. Oh, Molly was </span>
  <em>
    <span>definitely </span>
  </em>
  <span>going to be sick at some point in the nearish future.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are...very comfortable,” Caleb slurred, from where he’d landed, half on Molly’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An odd, warm feeling spread through Molly’s chest. Probably a new and advanced stage of drunkenness he had not previously experienced. Or it was Caleb’s fault. Probably feeling warm and comfortable was a very strange feeling for him after this long. At some point, his arms had ended up around Caleb, just loosely, and despite how much cooler Caleb’s body temperature ran, it felt oddly cold to remove them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” he said, trying to pull away from Caleb, who had at some point clamped both arms around Molly’s middle and was clinging like a small child to a ragdoll, which...was not cute. Not in the least. Dammit. “I’m just going to go...be sick on Fjord and make it look like he did it to himself…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb made a soft little half-awake groaning noise and clung tighter. “...five more minutes, </span>
  <em>
    <span>bitte</span>
  </em>
  <span>…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay. Five minutes, </span>
  <em>
    <span>then </span>
  </em>
  <span>I’m going to go...pick on Fjord…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had to get re-adjusted first to actually fit on the bed, because five minutes hanging half-on and half-off with one foot on the floor just sounded uncomfortable. Of course, the moment he was on the bed, Caleb nuzzled up under his chin like a friendly cat, and even knowing that Caleb would never even </span>
  <em>
    <span>consider </span>
  </em>
  <span>doing this sober...it felt good. Too good. And the little bereft noises Caleb made when, after five minutes, Molly really did try to pull away were dispiriting enough that Molly caved in such a short space of time it was honestly embarrassing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five more minutes wouldn’t hurt, he thought muzzily. Five more minutes, then Caleb would be asleep and he could slip out before either of them had to face anything they’d done tonight in the cold light of morning. Molly had never regretted a night of debauchery in his life before, and he didn’t want this to be the first time, but...another five minutes couldn’t hurt anything.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I hate literally everything about this chapter and am only publishing it now because it is an absolute necessity to get us into position for what comes next and also I have been working on it for more than a week at this point and cannot stand the sight of it any longer. Please, forgive me. I will do better next time.<br/>EDIT: I should, perhaps, mention that 'next time' might be a while away, because the next chapter will require me to rewatch episode 26, and I am not capable of getting through that episode without embarrassing tears, screaming and possible drunkenness.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Caleb came to consciousness slowly, wrapped in incandescent warmth and the inexplicably comforting certainty that Mollymauk was safe and close at hand. His head was aching and his mouth tasted like something furry had crawled in there and died at some point overnight, but in the grand scheme of all the ways Caleb had woken up in his life, this was still one of the pleasanter options.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was later than he usually woke, early-autumn sunshine streaming in through the one narrow window, where someone...himself, maybe…had neglected to pull the curtains to last night. He must- Must have been quite tired, to fall into bed like that- Had he- He’d used his thread on the cart, hadn’t he, so-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door. He didn’t remember locking it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb bolted upright, his head splitting in protest at being so abruptly jostled-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Only to find himself being quite firmly pinned down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Breathless panic bolted through him for a moment, and the weight on his chest shifted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb?” said a sleepy, familiar voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb blinked, and looked down, to find Mollymauk Tealeaf draped all over him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, no. No, no, no. What had he </span>
  <em>
    <span>done </span>
  </em>
  <span>last night?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He groaned, low and heartfelt, and heard an answering muffled groan from where Mollymauk had buried his face against Caleb’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...fuck off,” Molly mumbled, and only clung tighter as Caleb tried to pull away and do just that. “Stop it. New rule. Beds aren’t allowed to start moving on their own…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had a very strong grip, Caleb couldn’t help but notice, and then immediately resolved to never think about any of this ever again. His head was still pounding, and it was difficult work to try and get himself disentangled from a very cuddly tiefling who did not show any indication to move and didn’t seem to be more than half-awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb could almost envy him - he didn’t much want to be awake right now either. But the thought of still being here when Mollymauk woke up enough to realise where he was- No. It would be better, for all of them, if Caleb could just...find Nott, and nurse this hangover on his own, somewhere dark and quiet and out of the way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had almost managed to pry one clawed hand loose from his coat when Mollymauk shifted sleepily and looked up, straight into Caleb’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...oh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...ja,” Caleb said resignedly. “‘Oh’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly blinked up at him, soft and sleepy and perhaps still a little drunk from last night - certainly he’d drunk enough to drown - and it was all too close to the worst of what Caleb’s fevered mind could conjure up, sometimes, on the edge of sleep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than Mollymauk looked away, his tail uncoiling from around Caleb’s knee and flicking out behind him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How’s your head?” he asked, rather hoarsely, “You...you were pretty drunk last night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That </span>
  </em>
  <span>was quite obvious. Oh, gods, what had he done that Mollymauk couldn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>look </span>
  </em>
  <span>at him? Awful visions flashed before his eyes, of having drunkenly thrown himself at Mollymauk, presuming on an accident and...what, a handful of ingrained expectations he hadn’t discarded as thoroughly as he had thought and some vague idea of what he might’ve had, had he been a better man than he was?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I...was, ja,” he agreed shakily, putting two fingers to the bridge of his nose and grimacing as the pain in his head flared again. “I...Mollymauk, I cannot begin to apologise…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“None of that,” Molly cut him off, before wincing himself at how loudly he’d spoken - served him right, Caleb thought, as another pulse of pain radiated out from somewhere that felt like it was just behind his eyes - “How’re you feeling?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb grimaced again. “...like shit,” he admitted. “But-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know what he was going to say next. There was too much to say. That he was sorry, that he didn’t know what - other than far too much ale - had got into him, that he still didn’t remember just what had happened last night or what he was begging forgiveness for. There had been dancing, he thought, casting his mind back, and- Something about Nicodranas traditions? He couldn’t really remember much past that, past the sudden, stunning image of Mollymauk in his arms, whirling through the steps of a waltz, his red eyes shining and his hands so, so warm, burning like brands through Caleb’s coat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb could feel the heat blooming across his face already. Had he really…?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was still mostly on top of him, he realised suddenly. Or- No, not realised, it wasn’t as though he could miss it, but somehow it hadn’t seemed like the first concern up until now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...er, Mollymauk?” he managed, giving up entirely on whatever it was he had meant to say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly glanced back up at him, and then looked down to where he was sprawled out across Caleb’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...oh. Right. Just let me…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no logical reason for Caleb to feel disappointed when Mollymauk pulled away - thank all the gods that they were, at least, both still fully-clothed, even down to Molly’s ridiculous silken coat - but an odd, hollow feeling spread in his chest as Mollymauk sat up, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed to set at the end, leaving Caleb still lying mostly prone, trying to lever himself up as best he could without his head threatening to burst from the pressure. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Götterverdammt</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he hated this. There was a reason he didn’t usually drink this much. Granted, most of the time was that the punishment of the hangover was not quite enough to offset how little he deserved a night of forgetfulness, but that was...was semantic, really.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was clutching at his own head now - apparently they’d both drunk more than they should last night. For a moment, Caleb allowed himself the fantasy that maybe, maybe this hadn’t been his fault, but...no. No. If Mollymauk had taken it into his head that he wanted some company for the night, he had had better options than Caleb to choose from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk?” he repeated, and winced, as his own voice was far, far too loud to be borne in this state. “Mollymauk- What- I- I don’t remember, what happened last night? This is- Is...not how I would have expected to wake up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah…” Molly shrugged. “Uh...sorry about that. I was getting you to bed, but you got a bit...a bit clingy there, and I couldn’t…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb closed his eyes. Of course he had. How pathetic.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I am sorry, Mollymauk. I- My actions were- were inexcusable, and-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk poked him, not ungently, in the side. “What, a bit of cuddling?” he said, with a pale, thin shadow of his usual cheerfulness that Caleb couldn’t feel echoed in the bond. “Wasn’t as if I was sorry to do it. You’re kind of cute after a few drinks, you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt his face grow, if anything, even hotter, and took advantage of being hungover to roll over and groan into the pillow. It would, he thought, be a lot easier to keep his imagination under control if Mollymauk would stop </span>
  <em>
    <span>talking </span>
  </em>
  <span>to him like that. Even knowing it was just the way Molly talked, that he’d flirt with more-or-less anyone just to pass the time and amuse himself, or to gloss over a situation he clearly wasn’t nearly as comfortable with as he claimed...somehow Caleb kept forgetting himself, and letting himself believe, even just for a few moments at a time, that Molly might mean it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He heard the sound of Molly’s boots hitting the floor, and then a groan, then footsteps and- Water being poured from a ewer?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His head still protesting, Caleb rolled half-onto his side, to see Mollymauk halfway across the room, leaning heavily on the chest-of-drawers, having shed his coat and the even more luridly-coloured jerkin underneath it so he stood there in just his shirtsleeves. It was the sort of inn where they left a pitcher of water and a basin for their guests to wash of a morning, and Mollymauk was taking full advantage, half-leaning over the basin as he upended the whole jug over his curly head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb swallowed. He couldn’t quite help it, even here, too far away to track the droplets down the back of Mollymauk’s neck, even as the water soaked through his shirt, rendering it half-translucent and clinging, purple skin showing through. He ought to look away, he knew, but somehow he couldn’t quite bring himself to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was too drawn to Mollymauk - to the bright, overwhelming quality of his mind through the bond, to his physical beauty, just as overwhelming, so dazzling that Caleb almost couldn’t stand to look and couldn’t bring himself to look away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was ridiculous.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>How long had he known Mollymauk? Not even a month. He’d known beautiful people before, and charming people, and never made such a fool of himself as this. What, really, did he know of Mollymauk beyond that? That he was brave, that he was kind, that he’d been given his name off the top of his ringmaster’s head and proceeded to make it his own...it was not enough to think himself in love over. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>wasn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>in love with Mollymauk - he’d been in love before, and knew the feeling well enough to know this wasn’t it. But he might be, if unduly encouraged. And that- That was a reason to back off, not to try and learn more. What right did he have to ask about Mollymauk’s time at the circus, whether there had been anyone he had been sorry to leave behind, what his opinions were on a hundred subjects that had never come up between them?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew, with the dizzy, sickened feeling of a man standing at a cliff-edge and preparing to jump, that he was going to ask anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here,” Molly said, turning around, and Caleb dragged his eyes away, trying to re-focus on something that wasn’t the peak of a nipple standing out against soaking wet linen, the flash of fine collarbones where Mollymauk’s shirt lay open halfway down his chest. Mollymauk had the jug in one hand, and a sponge in the other, and was holding them out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...</span>
  <em>
    <span>nein, danke schön</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Caleb muttered, pushing himself slowly and painfully upright.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was still watching him, and a considering look had come into his face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is it all right if I try something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb’s stomach turned over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...what…” he cleared his throat. “What did you have in mind?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here, let me-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk crossed the room in two long strides, throwing himself carelessly down on his knees in front of Caleb, and reached out tentatively with both hands to catch Caleb’s face. Caleb’s eyes flicked, against his will, down to Mollymauk’s mouth, and then, with an effort of will, he focused instead on Mollymauk’s nose, which seemed like the safest option. It was a perfectly good nose, entirely inoffensive, the slightest bit crooked from an old break but if you weren’t looking at it very closely you’d hardly be able to tell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was an odd, sucking feeling, like a tiny, toothless mouth affixed over Caleb’s pulse-points, and the red eye of the snake on the back of Mollymauk’s hand burst open, blood running down the back of his hand and down his arm almost to the elbow. More liquid splattered on the ground and all at once, Caleb felt...not terribly much better, if he was honest. His mouth was still dry, and his head still hurt, but...less than it had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...how did you do that?” he asked, blinking, and almost looking up to meet Mollymauk’s eyes before his gaze flicked away again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk grinned a wide, smug grin. “That thing I can do with the poisons? You remember I tried it in the swamp back in Berleben? Or...did you notice that? You had...other things to worry about...in that fight, but this was before that. Not important. Anyway, alcohol is...technically a poison, so it...sorta stands to reason I could draw it out the same way. So, did it work?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb grimaced. “...I...I think so,” he admitted. “I...thank you, Mollymauk.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s tail, just the tip of it, flicked from side to side. “Thank you for helping with my little experiment, and for not freaking out about the creepy blood powers. That’s really nice, and now you aren’t hungover and I know that’s something I can do. I’d call that a fair trade.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The eye on the back of Molly’s hand seemed to have healed over now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your hand-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb caught it, pulling it away from his face to look down at the eye. It was quite inert, a red eye like Mollymauk’s own, sclera and iris and pupil all in shades of red so subtle that he had to look very closely to see them at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How...how does this work, exactly?” he asked, squinting down at it. “Is- I realise you would not know, but is there...I have seen them bleed before when you used your abilities, but is there a- a particular pattern, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. He was trying, not entirely successfully, to look casual, but Caleb felt the ripple of unease that went through him. “...I’m not all that sure what all of them do,” he admitted. “This makes five I’ve figured out. Probably there’s a couple more…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb squinted. “...you only mentioned four of them back in Zadash.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t exactly want to give everything away.” Molly’s tail twitched again. “Guessing you’ve still got a few tricks up your sleeve the rest of us don’t know about.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb mustered up the ghost of a smile. “A- A few, yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk smiled right back at him, slow and still a little sleepy around the edges, and Caleb realised, with an odd little shock, that he still had Molly by the wrist, Mollymauk’s other hand still pressed against the side of his face. He watched the same realisation spread across Molly’s face, his red eyes widening as they met Caleb’s own-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a sudden loud hammering on the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Check your coin purses!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They sprang apart. The door did not fly dramatically open, for them to be caught so close together they were breathing one another’s air, but the moment was broken nonetheless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked away, already groping through his many pockets for his purse-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fear gripped him as he went through more pockets, but- No, his components were all safe, even the diamond, the single most monetarily valuable item he owned, stolen by Nott during the early days of their friendship and too useful to sell even when they’d been picking pockets to survive. His books were safe too, thank all the gods - he might actually have resorted to murder to get those back - but every copper he’d had on him had been taken, and from the looks of it, Mollymauk wasn’t very much better off.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should...go downstairs,” Caleb said awkwardly. He could do with something to drink. Something with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>very low</span>
  </em>
  <span> alcohol content. Water, if there was any clean enough, though he wasn’t holding out very much hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Molly agreed, straightening up and reaching for the luridly-coloured jerkin. Caleb had never seen it this close-up before, had first assumed that the vivid green and red and yellow sleeves of it were just another part of Mollymauk’s extravagant coat. It had the same, homemade look about it as the coat, and Caleb wondered where Molly had got it from, before sharply reminding himself that it wasn’t his business.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you...do that poison-purging thing to yourself?” Caleb asked cautiously, frowning at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shook his head. “Could try it, but something tells me I’m not going to want to waste the rites. I’ll order something greasy for breakfast, make it up the traditional way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb opened his mouth to ask just how Molly was planning to </span>
  <em>
    <span>pay </span>
  </em>
  <span>for that greasy breakfast, but right now that just seemed like adding insult to injury.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They found the others in Beauregard and Jester’s shared room, all except Jester looking as bleary-eyed and miserably hungover as Caleb had felt before Molly had purged the last of the alcohol from his system until all that was left was a faint dehydration headache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They reached a plan simply enough - Jester, apparently, still had enough money for the greasy breakfast the rest of them so sorely needed - and they were apparently going to be using Mollymauk’s ‘pan wiles’ on Irena to try and find out who might’ve taken their money, which was not something Caleb had any right to feel in any way irritated or possessive about, he reminded himself before any such feelings could take hold. And Jester had agreed to buy them all breakfast, which was all to the good - Caleb did not, strictly speaking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>need </span>
  </em>
  <span>a large and greasy breakfast, but it was hardly something to turn his nose up at regardless of whether he was hungover enough to warrant it or not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Rissa was downstairs waiting for them, which - Molly was right, that was a pretty compelling argument that she hadn’t done it. It wasn’t as though Nott and Caleb had ever stayed long in any tavern where they’d been running the Money Pot con, after all. The best place to be when dealing with any given mark finding out they’d been had was in the next town over or, failing that, the opposite side of town from wherever the mark was likely to look for you. And Rissa was just about the only person left in the Blushing Tankard, so it wasn’t that she’d relied on hiding in a crowd.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ireeena!” Jester sang out, just a hair too loud, making a faint pulse go through Caleb’s head and making the rest of the party groan and squint and clutch at their foreheads, Mollymauk included, so at least there were </span>
  <em>
    <span>some </span>
  </em>
  <span>benefits to having been a test subject this time, which was more than could be said for any of Caleb’s previous experience.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Irena the barkeep looked up from where she was sitting at the bar, eating a sandwich and looking rather the worse for wear herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good morning,” she said, looking them over. “You’re all looking, uh, appropriately fucked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Beauregard agreed. “In a few ways.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb’s ears went hot. They hadn’t- He was quite sure he’d remember, or at least there would have been some evidence if that had happened, but...Fjord, he remembered, already thought he and Molly were sleeping together, even only intermittently. Did- Did </span>
  <em>
    <span>everyone</span>
  </em>
  <span>?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, he thought, stealing a glance at Nott. Nott, for one, couldn’t think that, or he would know about it - she would probably want to keep up her end of their agreement and threaten Mollymauk about it, even though that wasn’t the sort of mutual defence they’d initially come together for. Nott- Where had she slept last night? It couldn’t have been in their room, or she’d still have been there in the morning. He hoped he hadn’t ended up putting her out of her bed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Irena gave them all a considering look, her eyes lingering on Fjord, who did not look as though he’d had a good night </span>
  <em>
    <span>at all</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “What can I get for you?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Bacon,” Nott piped up, squinting up from under her hood after a few long seconds which testified to just how bad her hangover must’ve been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Irena nodded. “Breakfast can be done, let me grab that. Sid!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Sid! More breakfast!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Irena, as it turned out, had not seen anyone taking all of their money last night, which did make sense, since they’d been up in their rooms and she, presumably, had either been down here bartending until the party finally cleared out, or in her own room somewhere else in the inn - it was a rare landlord who slept in the same part of the inn as their guests - but was still disappointing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jester and Fjord headed out to check on the cart and its contents, as Molly set about ordering a large breakfast for the Nein as a whole and Beauregard glowered down at the bar, until the first plates arrived, and she looked around at Caleb with an expression of utter betrayal on her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” she hissed. “How come you’re not hungover? You drank as much as any of us last night, but now you’re sitting there all…” she waved a hand, apparently intending to take in Caleb’s general state of unusual sobriety. Even the dehydration headache was starting to fade, now he’d had a mug of reasonably-clean well-water and was mostly over the worst of the thirst. It was...very peculiar, and did not feel as if it should be allowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk, er…” Caleb coughed. “Mollymauk was able to help with that. Alcohol is...er...is technically a poison, after all, and we have already seen that he can- can remove those at will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard grunted. “Right. Preferential treatment. You could do that for the rest of us, you know!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could,” Molly agreed, munching on a strip of bacon and looking a much healthier shade of purple than he had done when they woke up together. “Not going to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, come on, man! You aren’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>actually </span>
  </em>
  <span>a thing yet! Or did that happen last night when I wasn’t paying attention?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was, very definitely, not going to think about that word ‘yet’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It does take some...some expenditure of blood,” he offered, as a placation, which made Mollymauk’s tail whisk a little in irritation Caleb felt, faintly, echoing through the bond. Ah. He was just annoying Beauregard again, and Caleb was getting in the way. Probably he’d do it if she asked, the next time they all got this drunk, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t hold it over her head first. Which was </span>
  <em>
    <span>childish</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not endearing at all, and Caleb shouldn’t want to smile at the thought of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tuned out the rest of their bickering, already looking around for Nott, who was scarfing down bacon as if it might be taken away at any moment. Which, to be fair, it might. Fjord and Jester were just coming back in now, and by the look on Fjord’s face - he really did look even rougher than the rest of them, despite having drunk rather less and disappeared rather earlier - they had had no luck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They continued to have no luck with Rissa and Irena, neither of whom knew anything, even when Nott attempted to offer up Molly and his ‘pan wiles’, much to Molly and Irena’s mutual indignation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took them most of the day, and several false leads, in the end, to track down who had taken their money. And, when they managed it, all they found were a handful of hungry children, as good as orphaned by the law of the Empire, and an obligation Fjord wouldn’t let them turn away from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was such a </span>
  <em>
    <span>harmless </span>
  </em>
  <span>little thing, idol worship. Who had they been hurting, really? Once, it had seemed like it </span>
  <em>
    <span>mattered</span>
  </em>
  <span>, like it was enough to kill and torture and do any number of monstrous things over, but now...well, he was an idol-worshipper himself, in the strict legal sense. If anyone were to find that little token of the Archeart he’d picked up in the Gentleman’s safehouse, he’d be lucky to end up in the Gearhold with them. And maybe that wouldn’t have been enough on its own for him to put his neck on the line to help them, but if they were going to the prison anyway - and it seemed that they were - they might as well do this, if they were going to lose the time regardless.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At the very least, it meant there was someone to watch Kiri while the rest of them...went to prison. Caleb didn’t think it was at all unreasonable that that thought made a knot form in the pit of his stomach, a sour taste in the back of his throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly had given the eldest girl a ring off his own hand, so the Nein could find them later, or for them to sell if they needed to. Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>the </span>
  </em>
  <span>ring, but Caleb had still felt that gut-wrenching moment of relief and astonishment and…not disappointment. Not in the least. That would be unpardonably selfish of him, and while Caleb was, on the whole, unpardonable, he at least tried to limit the worst of his excesses. At the very least, Molly’s gesture had reminded him to put up his thread around the Schuster house, which would be another level of protection, just in case the tithe collectors chose today, of all days, to come through for another sweep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It turned out to be a wiser precaution than Caleb had known, because they ran into a party of the Reapers halfway back to Cleff Tinkertop’s place to ask about this...hideous rolling abomination of metal and blades that he had apparently invented and they had, for no good reason that Caleb could see, agreed to fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t seem to be heading in the direction of the butcher’s shop where the Schuster children were waiting, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t - it was that time of year. And the Reapers...well, some of them were honest, but not all, and even when they were, a bad winter could ruin a family - they’d come close, once or twice, back home.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But if they wanted to help the Schusters, the only way involved getting past this spinning, rolling death machine that Cleff Tinkertop had designed. And, of course, the plans were all written in Gnomish, one of the few languages Caleb had never learned even the rudiments of. Even if they hadn’t been this was...fiendishly complex, and machines had never been Caleb’s passion - Nott, maybe, could have more luck, but her Gnomish wasn’t any better than his, and without that they were in trouble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What was quite clear, though, was that apparently they needed something sticky to gum up the works. Just Caleb’s molasses wouldn’t be enough - Caleb did not want to think about where Mollymauk had found out about the smoothness or lack thereof of his skin, or why he’d want to waste perfectly good spellcasting-grade molasses on ensuring it, but just the suggestion had nearly made Jester double over in a fit of the giggles - which meant they were making another detour in search of tar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hupperdook seemed like an entirely different city, by daylight - the air was thick with smog, the sound of many hammers, many machines running, and the occasional screech of the factory whistles. It was unlike...anywhere Caleb had ever been before, and there had been a time when he had considered himself quite worldly. It was never quiet here, anymore than it had been in Rexxentrum, but the noises were so much louder and more overwhelming that he wondered how anyone ever </span>
  <em>
    <span>slept</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Surely some people, at least, weren’t drinking so much they collapsed every night. There was, logically, only so long anyone could do that before it just became exhausting. Caleb was a little exhausted just thinking about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Iron Lot, the likeliest place to find the tar they needed, was on the very lowest level of the city, at the very foot of the mountain, and conveniently on the same level as the Gearhold itself. Their likeliest source for the tar they needed was just past a factory making the new firearms that had come out of Tal’Dorei.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was also, unfortunately, absolutely heaving with workers, Crownsguard…this was a military installation, and what they were churning out in those foundries now were the literal war machines that kept the larger, figurative one running. That, technically, might make stealing from them treason, but since Caleb would be dead if anyone figured out who he was and what he had done anyway, it could hardly get him into any </span>
  <em>
    <span>more </span>
  </em>
  <span>trouble. The rest of them, admittedly, were a bit more debatable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard had the first crack at it, and manifestly proved that nobody at the Assembly Yard was talking to anyone outside the Assembly Yard about anything, which did, in hindsight, make sense given that this would be an Imperial commission, and any trade of Imperially-purchased supplies would carry the same penalties as for theft.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We could just walk in and pretend to be a- a worker and just grab a bucket?” Nott suggested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just sneak in?” Beauregard asked, frowning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed. “I have an idea…” There was a general chorus of interested noises, and he went on. “Er- I could, er, summon Schmitt, and- It would be a slow process, but, er, he could carry it, you know, a couple of inches, low to the ground, and wait, and then go, you know, a couple of feet…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s his range?” Nott asked, eyes narrowing - it had been one of the first questions she had asked when Caleb learnt this spell, how far it could go, what they could use it for.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, it is about that distance,” Caleb said vaguely. Sixty or seventy feet was his estimate for how far it was from their position here to the tar, and that was about as far as Schmitt could go from him. “So it might be just shy, or- Let’s give it a whirl. Er- Just give me ten-ish minutes…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ten min- Oh, okay.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott turned away, pointedly whistling in the way of someone trying far, far too hard to look innocent. It made a smile tug ruefully at Caleb’s lips as he brought out his spellbook and started to cast, while Nott wandered off to scope out their target at closer range and Mollymauk kept an eye on the nearest worker, the one who’d turned Beauregard aside.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, so, hey, I- I like, as a plan B, you disguising yourself as a gnome worker,” Beauregard was saying in an undertone nearby.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Nott agreed, sounding wary. “Let’s see if Schmitt can-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do it first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do it first.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb finished speaking the words of the ritual, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt </span>
  </em>
  <span>it as the spell took.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja,” Caleb said harshly, just a little too loud. “Ah- Schmitt, one second. You two, circus people. Er- Mollymauk-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja, ja?” Mollymauk asked, with an extravagant flutter of his dark lashes - </span>
  <em>
    <span>ah, Gott</span>
  </em>
  <span>, that was cute-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud, but there was no denying Beauregard’s little groan next to him, or the way Mollymauk’s tail quivered a little, the tip flicking back and forth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-could the two of you, er, do something fabulous over there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A distraction?” Yasha asked - thank all the gods for Yasha, really, she was the only one of the Nein who didn’t have that awful </span>
  <em>
    <span>knowing </span>
  </em>
  <span>look on her face, only Mollymauk excepted, since he was smiling like the cat that got the pigeon - and Caleb hurried to nod his assent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>One impromptu burst of performance art later - Mollymauk was, it seemed, an individual of many talents, but tumbling was not one of them - and they had their tar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which meant that the Gearhold awaited. Caleb...was not looking forward to this at all, actually.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was not that it had been a very long time, now, since Caleb had seen the inside of a prison cell - it was an unfortunate occupation of the way he had lived since escaping the asylum - but that never seemed to make it any easier to bear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the Gearhold was...one of the  more secure he had seen. The prison was built into the mountain itself, just two great gates set into the cliff-face, with a dozen Crownsguard loitering outside the gates, just in case someone managed to make it that far.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once they were inside, it felt...a little like stepping into one of the lesser-known hells, the dim light casting reddish shadows over iron support beams and rough rock, the iron rusted red here and there, so that Caleb could never forget the crushing pressure of the whole mountain overhead, even as something in him shuddered in sympathy as the great gates slammed shut again behind them. He’d never done well in prisons.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The feeling was a little sharper, this time, doubling back on itself, making Caleb wish he had Frumpkin with him, just to feel the softness of his familiar’s fur under his fingers, and try to convince himself that he could walk straight out of this place, if he so chose, and no-one would stop to bar his way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Wardenhelm’s office was perhaps forty feet in, sloping downward, rather than up and into the mountain proper as Caleb had half-expected. Then again, this did seem to be a mining town - he would’ve expected a little more concern for the chance of somebody’s mine accidentally breaching the prison. Perhaps that was why they were going deeper and deeper underground, until it was impossible to forget the crushing weight above their heads. The Wardenhelm himself was...about typical, in Caleb’s experience. A busy, stressed public servant with ambitions beyond managing a prison in a small town for the rest of his career. Perhaps not overly cruel, but not especially kind either, and concerned more with his budget and how to make this look good to his superiors than anything else. And, unfortunately, the Nein were not a group especially equipped to appear respectable in front of such a man. Not that Beauregard and Mollymauk didn’t do their best, but Caleb would’ve preferred to have their reward agreed upon </span>
  <em>
    <span>before </span>
  </em>
  <span>they went down to face the giant rolling death machine, and not after, when it would be all too easy for the Wardenhelm to nod and turn them out without their promised pay.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Granted, said pay was probably not going to benefit them in any way, shape or form, but it was the principle of the thing. And then they would have to stick around in Hupperdook to get revenge for being stiffed on their pay, because once word got out that a group like theirs had accepted something like that without even trying to get back at the people responsible, Caleb was not at all sure the Gentleman wouldn’t attempt to take advantage of their apparent willingness to be made fools of.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the prison itself was...was terrible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thin and starving gnomes, humans, half-elves, dwarves...every sort of person you could find in Hupperdook, you could find here too, barely more than shadows in the torchlight. Prison had a funny effect on a person, where a man might age twenty years in his first week behind bars, then stay the same for the rest of his life, as if just the doors slamming shut on you took twenty or thirty years off your life, as surely as a spell. Some were muttering to themselves, some caked in shit or other filth from the corners of the cells and some trying to cling to cleanliness and to the memories of the lives they must have had, some cried out and some were silent, and everywhere there was the stench of stale piss and too many bodies crammed in too tightly, the feeling of many eyes on the back of Caleb’s neck, making him hunch deeper and deeper into his ratty old coat before any of them realised that he was one of them, that the only reason he was on this side of the bars at all was a terrible miscarriage of justice, that, if the world were right and fair and worked according to the rules it laid out for itself, he would be the one imprisoned, and these people, perhaps, would be free.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They came to a halt, in the end, in front of another heavy metal door, barred and chained and reinforced to be sure of nothing getting out. A prickle went up the back of Caleb’s neck, and though he tried to hide it, he felt Nott’s hand slip up to squeeze gently at his wrist before she let him go to re-check her crossbow, as the guards began the slow and arduous work of unlocking all the many padlocks holding the door closed and Beau started quizzing them on what, exactly, they should expect to find on the other side. Caleb could barely hear her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very well,” the guard said, as the last chain rattled loose. “May the- May the Platinum Dragon guide you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door gaped wide, and they stepped through it, and it slammed shut behind them with a noise loud enough to rattle the walls.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was dark in the bowels of the Gearhold, their torches doing nothing but making the darkness dirty.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All the same, it was enough to see the places where the walls were scraped and battered with what looked like the marks of many knives. From the machine? Or- </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Had they left prisoners down here with this thing?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two years it had been down here...if anyone had been left down here then, they were long dead by now, and if they were lucky death had been swift.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It did not seem, though, that they had been lucky. There were bones in the first cell they reached, three full skeletons. The walls were crumbling, bloodstained here and there - had that been the construct, trying to get in at them, or had they been desperate enough to claw at the walls until their hands bled, preferring the construct’s blades to slow starvation?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He heard Yasha’s voice, a little way behind, and then Nott’s, agreeing that it was rough. ‘Rough’ was not the word, but Caleb didn’t know if he had any words that would be enough for this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay,” he said slowly, forcing himself to something approaching calm. “We can check this off our list, probably. There are some dead inmates in here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott made a faint, distressed noise in her throat. “If the thing comes out here we’re all dead, so we should probably figure out a way to stop it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We can all get into that room if we have to,” Mollymauk pointed out, though it was clear he wasn’t altogether easy with the idea. Caleb couldn’t blame him. The thought of dying in a cramped little cell with something waiting to kill him outside the door...they were better-armed and better-equipped than these prisoners had been, he reminded himself. And they had seen the schematics, for whatever use that was to them. They could survive this, if they were clever about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right…” Nott agreed. “But I can’t open it…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, short of blowing the door off its hinges, Caleb couldn’t either, and that would be both loud and undermine the reason for wanting to be sealed off in the cell in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fortunately, doors could be magically sealed. It wasn’t foolproof, but it was better than standing around out here waiting for this thing to come and kill them where they stood. Unfortunately, in all his planning, he’d forgotten that he didn’t have any gold dust for the spell’s material component, which put them all right back to square one and meant he’d have to send Frumpkin to investigate this thing. Caleb did not like this plan. He did not have nearly enough incense to bring Frumpkin </span>
  <em>
    <span>back</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and this thing was...it might not be the most dangerous thing they had ever faced, but it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>new</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and that carried dangers of its own. There were no books, no records he could fall back on, no scraps of things learnt in passing during his studies that might offer some help. Whatever they did here, it would have to rely only on their own observations, and what little they had been able to glean from Cleff Tinkertop’s schematics.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was barely enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb had had a vague idea of what the construct looked like from the schematics, but they did not do justice to the real thing. A great metal sphere, its overlapping metal plates dented and marked with reddish stains where it had hammered itself against the walls, its limbs long and thin and spidery, and wickedly sharp.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And adaptable.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tar had been a good idea, but they’d none of them reckoned on the idea that Cleff would have prepared for such a thing, and apparently telling them about it had entirely slipped his mind. The mechanical eye retracted, cleaned itself, and emerged again red and baleful, and one of the steel claws caught Caleb in the stomach, the spell he’d been holding fizzling out as his world narrowed to a single point of red-hot agony.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He struggled to cast again, to try and get the construct to stop, but pain- He had never had Astrid’s knack for endurance. Trent had remarked on it more than once. It was, he had said, Bren’s greatest weakness, and so he had needed remedial sessions to try and make up the difference. But that had been a long time ago, and Bren’s pain tolerance had gone with everything else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After that, he could only think of the fight in flashes - Jester’s hands cool against his skin as she whispered a few words and the pain...lessened, a little, enough for him not to pass out from the pain. Yasha’s sword coming down on the armoured shell, the ear-splitting clang of metal upon metal and the twisted metallic screech of the construct. The shrapnel ricocheting past him to embed itself in the wall just beside his right ear. Mollymauk’s sword plunging through a narrow gap in the layers of whirling metal, until he was wrist-deep in the thing, blood dripping down his arm where the broken edges of the outer shell had scraped against him, a flare of blue light and a crackle of electricity...and the thing fell, its spidery limbs going limp as it rolled over onto its back and lay there, quite inert.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb...didn’t remember much, after that. He’d said something that had probably made sense at the time, and the next he knew, Jester had her hand on the wound again, and when he looked down at where the blade had impaled him, there was nothing to show for what should have been a slowly fatal injury but a thick scab and a hole straight through his tunic and shirt that would need mended at some point in the nearish future. He grimaced to himself at the thought - he had always hated sewing. Somehow, his fingers could be deft as anything with a spell or a handful of components, but he still couldn’t sew a straight seam without pricking himself until he bled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, since by the time he stumbled over, Yasha had managed to kick open one of the locked doors without any need for magical intervention, there didn’t seem to be any harm in shuffling over to the door of the first cell and flopping down against the doorframe, just for a little while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was warm again when he drifted awake, and found Beauregard’s head on his shoulder, where she had apparently had the same idea as him. There was something wet soaking through his coat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah- What is that?” he mumbled. “Is that your blood-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I ‘unno-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-or is that mine?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I don’t know,” Beauregard slurred out, a little more intelligibly this time. “It might be yours. It’s hard to tell…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There didn’t seem to be much to say about that, and soon enough Caleb felt exhaustion pulling him under again. Whoever’s blood it was, it didn’t seem to be doing any harm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he was shaken gently awake, the hand that reached for him almost burned with warmth, but even without that, he’d have known who it was without so much as opening his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you do a Detect Magic spell, Caleb?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh…” Caleb blinked the sleep out of his eyes, not quite looking at Mollymauk. “Ja, I have a little bit...left in me. Mollymauk. Will you help me up, please?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh- Yeah, come on, that’s all right…” Mollymauk started, hauling Caleb up under his arms like a recalcitrant Frumpkin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Beauregard groaned. “He’s my pillow!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Molly!”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Go fuck yourself, Beau,” Molly retorted, setting Caleb on his feet but sticking close enough that Caleb could reach out and lean on him, if he so chose. “Come on.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay,” Caleb groaned. “Point me at the thing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>‘The thing’ appeared to be this whole level of the prison, and, honestly, Caleb wasn’t expecting much. This was, after all, a working prison under the auspices of the Dwendalian Empire and, Vergesson aside, there were not many places that required the sort of magic used to imprison truly high-level magic-users and other such troublesome enemies of the state. Certainly not a little regional prison like this, however...hideously well-constructed the Gearhold might be. That construct had probably been the most magically significant thing in the whole prison, before Mollymauk put his sword through it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It still took fifteen minutes to comb through every cell at this level, with Mollymauk hovering over him all the while, just in case Caleb’s knees gave out under him, which was...kindly meant, he supposed, even if it seemed a lot of fuss to make for an injury that had faded, now, almost to nothing. All the same, he appreciated it. His feet felt...a little unsteady, under him, and his head was light. He felt...like he’d stayed up all night reading again, and not realised it until the words began to swim on the page in front of him. There was, however, nothing much for a spell to detect. Two faintly burning torches, enchanted to be ever-burning and ordinary enough for a place like this - nothing they couldn’t have worked out without magic just because they were still burning after two years of nothing down here but Cleff Tinkertop’s murderous mechanical construct - but nothing else that Caleb could see.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The spell took more out of him than he’d been expected, and maybe that was what loosened his tongue, because after the last cell had been checked over, it felt only natural to turn to Mollymauk and lay a hand on his shoulder, just so Caleb could steady himself, to look up into his face and say, with the confidence of fools and drunkards-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, the only thing magical here is you, </span>
  <em>
    <span>schatz</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>-and to stroke a hand down Molly’s cheek, over the feathers of his peacock tattoo. His skin was very smooth and very soft, not a hint of stubble to be found, and Caleb found himself wanting to trace the whorls of the peacock’s eyes for a moment before sense reasserted itself and he pulled away. Mollymauk’s eyes were very wide, his mouth fallen just slightly open, and it seemed like the thing to do, then, to stumble back to where he had left Beauregard and collapse again beside her. The others would wake them, when it was time to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, he had once again reckoned without Mollymauk, because no sooner had he put his head down on Beauregard’s shoulder than they were both being dragged up again, and Caleb felt Yasha’s strong hands on him this time. There was something very </span>
  <em>
    <span>reassuring </span>
  </em>
  <span>about Yasha, he thought muzzily. He wasn’t quite sure what. But it made it a lot easier to let himself be hauled to his feet like a sack of potatoes while Molly helped Beauregard up, not without a great deal of mutual grumbling about the necessity or lack thereof of his help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Apparently it was more necessary than either Beauregard or Mollymauk had assumed, as she ended up fainting into Yasha’s arms before they were all the way out of the deeps, and had to be carried the rest of the way up to the Wardenhelm’s office, where Cleff and Rissa were waiting for them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps predictably, simply having destroyed the nigh-unkillable metal monstrosity that had terrorised his prison and killed his prisoners was not sufficient incentive for Wardenhelm Drokrusher to release a gnomish couple whose crimes had harmed no-one and whose family were still depending on them. It cost them an additional hundred and fifty gold pieces to see the Schusters freed, and even with the promise of an even larger payout waiting for them back in Zadash...that all depended on the second job that awaited them in Shadycreek Run. Caleb did not imagine the Gentleman would reward a job half-done.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Schusters themselves hardly seemed to know what to make of their release. They, it seemed, had been relatively lucky. They were thin, pale in the way of people who hadn’t seen the sun in far, far too long a time, dirty...but cleaner than many of the prisoners they had passed on the way down, and though they looked frightened and bewildered by their situation, they didn’t have the dead-eyed, beaten-down look of people who had forgotten what it was to have a life outside the prison walls. Caleb was very familiar with that look, by now. He’d seen it in enough faces during the brief time in Vergesson that he could remember to be quite intimate with the despair and the horror of it. These two might yet be all right, provided they learnt to keep their secrets better. It would be hard - they had a record for idol-worship already, and once the crown had caught you once, it would know what to look for a second time - but they would have a chance, at least, on the outside that they never would in the Gearhold. And they were clearly eager to see their children again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it was just Gilda Schuster’s red hair that did it - dulled almost brown with dirt, but still recognisable - but a pang went through Caleb as the Schusters mobbed around their parents for a hug, all the noise and chaos of Hupperdook at night just a backdrop to their reunion.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t until Kiri came out to join in the hug that the idea hit him, but when it did...well. She could do a lot worse than this. Even with the threat of the Crown and another sentence for idol-worship hanging over all their heads, she could do worse than this. Arguably she already was by staying with them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb cleared his throat, looking around at the others.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This could be our chance to find a good home for her,” he said in a low voice, trying not to disrupt the heartfelt family reunion taking place just feet away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was the first to realise what he was driving at.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes! Yes…” Nott trailed off, looking, for a moment, slightly pained. Caleb dropped a hand, very gently, on her shoulder. He hadn’t spent as much time with Kiri as Nott or Jester or even Beauregard - he hadn’t quite dared, honestly - but he knew Nott had been fond of the girl, and this...it would be hard even for him, to leave Kiri behind, even knowing it was the best thing they could do for her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Mighty Nein!” Kiri declared, extricating herself from the general hug and brandishing her dagger in greeting...which was another bad habit they’d taught her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Kiri,” Beauregard started, and then huffed out a breath, looking to Caleb as if he might know some way out of this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You like these kids, Kiri?” Caleb asked, crouching down to the little kenku’s level.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kiri put her head on one side. “...okay,” she said, in Jester’s voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Did you have fun with them?” Beauregard asked, bending down to crouch at Caleb’s side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kiri nodded, and echoed Caleb. “Ja.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Good. That was good. It would make this next part easier, to know that she had a chance of being happy here, not just safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, you spend enough time with us-” Caleb started, and then wilted a little under Kiri’s scrutiny. They’d done this as soon as they could, but...she could have been killed at any point since they’d found her in the swamp, and it was only luck that she hadn’t been. And luck, Caleb was all too aware, ran out. He swallowed. “Beauregard and I here almost died tonight. You're just a little girl. You should be playing with these kids, not playing with us.” He looked up to the Schusters. If they refused...they would have to find another solution, and soon, because from what little Caleb had heard about Shadycreek Run, it wasn’t somewhere he would have chosen to bring Kiri. “What about you, Mom and Dad?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took the Schusters a little more than that to realise what was being asked of them, but...they seemed like good people, and their children liked Kiri already. This- This could work out well for her, if luck was with them. Certainly, they were quick enough to agree to it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb...had not expected to be singled out, in the goodbyes. Of all of them, he and Mollymauk had, for whatever reason, been the two Kiri had spent least time with. She would have a new family now, and that was for the best. Caleb...was not someone a child should be around, though the rest of the Nein were better, and they would all sleep more easily to know that Kiri was safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The prospect of a second night in Hupperdook was more exhausting than anything, after the events of the day, and after saying goodbye to Kiri, none of them was exactly in the mood for carousing, not even Mollymauk, who never seemed to be in the mood for anything else. Or- No. He was being uncharitable. Mollymauk was...he liked to enjoy himself as much as many and more than most, but if he had been the shallow hedonist he liked to portray himself as, he would not be near so dangerous to like.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott seemed to agree with him on that score, because she piped up as they were getting ready for bed - alone, in a room that they two were sharing, this time, rather than Nott camping out in Yasha’s room after finding someone else in with Caleb. Caleb hadn’t even thought of that, this morning, and the realisation made a hot pulse of guilt flare through him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So...last night,” Nott asked, shooting a sidelong look in his direction. “Do you...remember anything, at all?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shook his head. “I...I remember dancing?” he offered. “And…” he shook his head, feeling heat rush to his face. “You- You know how I get when I’m drunk, Nott. Mollymauk looked after me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He did…” Nott paused. “And that’s...that is all he did? I don’t...don’t think he’s that sort of creep, but I’ve been wrong before, and if he did-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nein!” Caleb interrupted. “No. No, he was...was just trying to be kind, I think. I was the one who...it is not his fault.” He coughed. “I am sorry for- for putting you out of your bed, though. I should not have-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>drunk,” Nott allowed. “I was fine, anyway. Yasha and Kiri weren’t using either of the beds.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Still, I should not have-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I could’ve taken the other bed anyway,” Nott reminded him. “I just...didn’t know if you’d want me to.” She paused, then added. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Nothing</span>
  </em>
  <span> happened?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing. And nothing is going to.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh. Good.” Nott nodded, a bit more confident now. “But, you know, if he ever...ever does try anything…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb managed a strangled sort of laugh. “That...is a vanishingly remote possibility, Nott, but...you know, I am hardly defenceless.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott did not, it had to be said, look particularly convinced. Probably the hole in his tunic where the construct’s arm had impaled him didn’t help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What about you?” Caleb asked, trying to change the subject. “Are you...I  know you are going to- going to miss Kiri, but it is- It is for the best, you know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Nott said hollowly. “But sometimes...sometimes things that are for the best are...</span>
  <em>
    <span>really</span>
  </em>
  <span> hard to do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb swallowed. He didn’t quite know what to say to that. It was the truth, but...he had done a lot of things he had thought were for the best, some nebulous greater good, that, looking back, filled him with nothing but horror.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja,” he agreed. “But, you know, she will...the Schusters seem like good people, and their children like her, which will make it easier…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know what else he was supposed to say. It had been the right thing to do, but Nott knew that as well as he did, and...even when a thing was truly </span>
  <em>
    <span>right</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not just the hypocritical illusion of it, that did not make it pleasant or easy to do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I suppose…” Nott hunched her shoulders a little, looking down at her damaged crossbow. “I- I thought about...if we couldn’t find anyone...maybe…” she shook her head. “I mean, she couldn’t stay with </span>
  <em>
    <span>us</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your...your friend, in Felderwin?” Caleb asked, frowning a little. It was...was a possibility, he thought, but kenkus...they were better-regarded than goblins, but not by much. If it wasn’t safe there for Nott, would it have been safe for Kiri?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott nodded, and looked away, still petting anxiously at her crossbow. “But- But you’re right. We...we’d have needed to- to go there, to Felderwin, and that wouldn’t…wouldn’t be a good idea right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is he...would he do that?” Caleb asked, a little doubtful. He didn’t know much about this first friend of Nott’s, Yeza, except that he had been a halfling, and an alchemist, and she had been expected to torture him, but hadn’t, and had eventually helped him escape. He liked to think the man would remember her fondly, but...even the kindest interrogator was still an interrogator, even a little goblin girl who had only been the torturer’s assistant because they hadn’t found any other use for her. But Nott...Nott clearly thought very highly of him, and as judges of character went she was...well, she was better than Caleb, certainly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I think so,” Nott said, after a long moment. “But...I mean, I don’t know what’s happened to him since...he might-” she shook her head. “But it’s...I mean, Kiri’s got her gnome family now, and they...they seem nice. I mean...not like they’d treat her badly. They might treat her </span>
  <em>
    <span>differently</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, if it- If it doesn’t work out, we can always come back,” Caleb said awkwardly, even knowing that, even if they did, there might not be terribly much they could do.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t help much.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t see Kiri again before leaving Hupperdook, and maybe that was for the best too. Let her get used to her new life, her new family, without them hanging around and getting in the way. And, in the meantime, Caleb and Beauregard were able to come to an agreement.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know why it was that Beauregard seemed to feel she needed someone to keep her on the straight and narrow - still less why, having decided she needed such a thing, she had chosen </span>
  <em>
    <span>Caleb </span>
  </em>
  <span>- but if she was willing to do as much for him, he could watch her for whatever transgressions she felt afraid she might commit. Caleb was not afraid of many - Beauregard was...abrasive, certainly. But he had never seen her do any real harm to anyone who had not thoroughly earned it, and he would trust her moral compass more than he would his own. There was, after all, a difference between being a bit of an asshole sometimes and being what Caleb had made of himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They collected their reward from Cleff Tinkertop, thus entirely removing the necessity of getting Nott’s crossbow fixed, and that was the end of things right up until they woke up, just one day out from Hupperdook, to find half their party gone.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I am not very good at writing fight scenes. Mea culpa, I hope to improve.<br/>Once again, I would like to remind everyone that I am a believer in thorough tagging, especially for character death. This story will contain no untagged major character death.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It had been their good luck to find Keg. Without her, they would have no idea where to look for the others, for Fjord and Yasha and Jester. There had been no sign at the campsite - if only Yasha had gone, they might have taken it for another of her unexplained disappearances. If Jester’s shield and handaxe hadn’t been still lying beside her bedroll, they might have assumed she and Fjord had just wandered off for a while, and would be back soon enough. Possibly that they’d gone skinny-dipping, and Jester had decided to put her jealousy from the Blushing Tankard to some practical use. There were no tracks or traces to be found, not until Caleb was able to look through Frumpkin’s eyes and see further afield, where another cart had been stopped not so far from them, just out of sight among the trees, and had disappeared off towards the north. It was entirely possible that it was only another group of innocent travellers, of course, and that their friends had been taken by something else entirely. But it was the only lead they had until Keg found them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The truth, though, was worse than Caleb had imagined. He’d thought- A kidnap, maybe. Yasha, Fjord and Jester had not all known each other more than a month, but Fjord and Jester had been travelling-companions before the Nein were formed, and they only really had those two’s word that they hadn’t been travelling together longer. Yasha was given to disappearances anyway, they might not be connected, or she might have happened upon them while they were being abducted by some old enemy. He had not thought of slavers. Slavery was technically illegal in the Dwendalian Empire, and carried a penalty that on paper looked like one of the harshest in all the legal codes of the Empire - anything between a year and twenty months in prison and a fine of eighteen hundred gold pieces. Of course, for most people who could afford to keep, feed and house slaves, that was pocket change, and there were always officials willing to look the other way for a payout. The Schusters would have suffered more for their worship of the Changebringer, but that...that was hardly a surprise. If the last five years had taught him anything, it was that poverty was the only crime in the Dwendalian Empire that no official could be made to overlook.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know how long it would take for these Iron Shepherds to find a market - this was not the sort of crime it had ever been expected it would be his duty to pursue - but the moment they were sold, their odds of finding their friends would dwindle almost to nothing. One trail would turn into three, and whichever they chose to pursue first, the other two trails would grow cold quickly enough. And every day they were captive, the risk of their being sold would grow. They could not afford to wait on this. And Keg knew their enemy better than they did, she seemed capable and formidable and all manner of other things that they would need if this was to work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thankfully, they seemed to be on about the same page about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. Before that, here's the deal,” Keg said, taking the dog-end of her cigarette out of her mouth to jab it at them. “I...have some beef, as you may have gathered, with this crew. I'm not interested in just getting your friends and getting out. I want to fucking kill every single last one of them. So, if you want any more information from me, I'm going to need a little bit of buy-in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk fished his purse - a ludicrously gaudy bedazzled thing covered in glass gemstones that made something in Caleb’s chest twist, even now, with something perilously close to fondness - out of an inside pocket of his coat, and threw it to her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Throw me a cigarette, please,” he said, his voice flat and even and not even pretending at his usual cheerfulness. Keg obliged, lighting it off her own before handing it over, and Caleb wrinkled his nose, just a little, at the smell as Molly took it between two fingers and took a long, deep drag, smoke pouring out of his nostrils like a dragon preparing to destroy a major city.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait,” Nott said, sitting up a little straighter and widening her eyes at Keg until they seemed to take up more than half her face. “If you could rescue your friends, or friend, or whatever-”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Keg gave a dismissive flick of the hand, grinding the last of her cigarette to powder under her boot. “There ain’t nobody </span>
  <em>
    <span>left </span>
  </em>
  <span>to rescue, man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Were they killed or sold?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Caleb wanted to ask, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>How long did it take? </span>
  </em>
  <span>If they were going to save anyone, they would need to know that. The Iron Shepherds wanted strong victims, and they’d gone for Yasha, Jester and Fjord - the three largest and burliest members of their party. If - and he had to think rationally about this, had to bite down on the fury and the shame and the grief roiling in him that were only half his own - they had hoped to sell pleasure-slaves, they would have taken Mollymauk as well. Possibly Beauregard. Caleb would have woken to find only he and Nott left behind. That was not as bad as it could be. At the very least, if they were hoping to sell pit-fighters, they could not hurt the others so very badly. Not if they intended to still have them in fighting condition to sell. But there were other uses for a strong body to the right buyer, and ways to break a person that didn’t require any physical harm to be done - Caleb knew them all by heart, even after sixteen years - and the thought of Yasha, Jester, Fjord suffering under those...he tasted salt and copper, and swallowed back bile. No. The priority, now, was to find them. The rest was mere speculation until they were found, in whatever condition.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, if Shadycreek Run is full of a bunch of criminals and you said you lived there for a while, what were you doing there?” Beauregard was asking now, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her eyes bright in the way they always got when she was chasing an answer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg’s eyes flicked away. “It’s not important.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard’s eyebrows rose. “Well, that’s...that’s pretty clear.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb watched as Keg shifted a little, her shoulders going back as if already anticipating a fight. “No-one there did anything </span>
  <em>
    <span>nice</span>
  </em>
  <span>, okay?” she gritted out. “So fucking- Imagine something...shitty, and I probably did it, okay? I’m not proud of it! I’m trying to- turn a new leaf, as it were, so-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not one to interrogate someone’s past,” Mollymauk cut her off. “I’m- Information’s information. We could use some help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg bristled a little, squaring her shoulders. “So, if you </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>my aid, I know that place like the back of my hand. I need some kind of assurance that when we find these motherfuckers you’re not just gonna- grab your friends and run. Because I’m going to need some backup if I’m going to take them out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard jabbed a finger at her, but not as aggressively as she might have done, which was probably a sign that they were all getting along. “How about equal assurance that you don’t fuck us over?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You could also hire us,” Mollymauk offered. An outside observer might even have thought him unaffected, his hand not shaking at all where it held his cigarette. But, even without feeling it - without </span>
  <em>
    <span>knowing </span>
  </em>
  <span>the depths of the rage that was humming through him, the desperate need to find the people who had done this and make them pay for treating Yasha and the others like chattel, like property, like something that could be </span>
  <em>
    <span>stolen </span>
  </em>
  <span>the way you might lift a rich man’s purse - Caleb didn’t think he would have believed it. He had rarely seen Mollymauk so close to serious. By his own standards, he was almost grim.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Hire</span>
  </em>
  <span> you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Twenty gold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You just </span>
  <em>
    <span>gave </span>
  </em>
  <span>me twenty gold!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s how I know you can afford us.” He flashed a bright, brittle little grin, showing teeth, a pale shadow of his usual brightness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a little more haggling after that, and even so Caleb had to ask what it was they were actually going up against. It was not a reassuring answer. Even numbers, at least - five on five - but with a larger organisation - this family in Shadycreek Run - behind them. The only good news was that these people were the mortal enemies, it seemed, of Ophelia Mardun and presumably by proxy the Gentleman. If they could not free their friends before they reached Shadycreek Run, they might reach out for help there, though if these Marduns needed help from the likes of them, Caleb didn’t know how much their help might be worth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott and their new associate were bickering over what, exactly, constituted detective work when Caleb felt obliged to step in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, do we have a- an arrangement here?” he asked. “A deal?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott nodded. “We’ll kill these folks, or...try to, anyway.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Keg gave a noncommittal sort of hum. “I don’t like that last part.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Well, what if one gets away?” Nott demanded, “We- We’re going to hunt them down over our lifetime?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes!”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Well, I don’t know, what if they go far away? Are we- Are we indebted to you </span>
  <em>
    <span>forever </span>
  </em>
  <span>now or can we just- Can we put, like a- a thirty-day cap on this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“These three are of great value to us, and they are our friends, and we are better off with them, and it is worth the trouble.” Caleb cut in, trying not to think of Yasha’s unquestioning acceptance, Jester’s smile as she’d coaxed him into talking about dances he’d half-forgotten and not attempted in sixteen years, Fjord’s reliable presence at their back. “We cannot accomplish what we've come out here to do in the first place without them,” he added, which was steadier ground and more to the point. The others, he realised, were all staring at him. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing,” Nott said, too quickly, clapping both hands over her face to hide her grin. “You sure sound like our new leader.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Leader. It was not...no. It was not a job Caleb was fit for. He was only...filling in, and in any case, they didn’t precisely have a leader, as such, not in the strict sense - Fjord was…was the one who most often spoke to strangers on the Nein’s behalf, but that was not the same thing, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Caleb </span>
  </em>
  <span>certainly couldn’t do the job to any degree of credit. Even in such a reduced group as there were, there must be better choices available - there was Beauregard, to name only one. Distantly, Caleb became aware that his hands were shaking.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A hand landed lightly on his shoulder.</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Don’t panic about it,” Mollymauk said quietly. “It’s going to be fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard made an irritated noise. “Aw- Cool. Real cool, Nott!”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“I mean, he’s got the intelligence…” Nott started.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You- You’ll be the leader,” Caleb said quickly, half-reaching out towards Beauregard, and thinking better of it at almost the last moment. He still hadn’t shaken off Mollymauk’s hand. “Um- But do we have a deal?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a moment, but Keg nodded. “Yeah. We have a deal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>First, then, they had to abandon the cart and the carthorses. Caleb felt a little bad about that, but this - this was cultivated land. Hupperdook might not be an agrarian area, but a town that size would need to be provisioned daily, far more than it was practical to send on waggons every day from the breadbasket of the Felderwin Tillage. If they were set loose...there were people nearby, and no-one, shady or otherwise, was about to turn down a free horse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything they couldn’t carry with them, they left.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, almost everything, anyway. Beauregard had strapped Jester’s shield to the side of her horse, and Mollymauk had done the same with his Platinum Dragon tapestry from the Harvest Close festival in Zadash, which formed a great flopping roll draped across the back of his saddle, at least until Keg asked to borrow it as a makeshift disguise. But the rest, they would have to give up for lost. Caleb thought about the Tiny Hut spell he still hadn’t perfected, and wished, not for the first time, that he had devoted more time to it before the need was made this obvious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They rode all day, until they reached the fringes of the Crispvale Thicket just as dusk was settling in, and then, after another round of bickering over leadership, went on, into the forest itself in the hopes of trimming a few days off their journey. It was, Caleb had to admit, the smart move. The Iron Shepherds had a cart, had prisoners, and the forest path would be a danger to both. If they were lucky, perhaps they could cut this slaving party off before they returned to Shadycreek Run, and the protection of their backers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, that had been before they were ambushed by ankhegs outside an abandoned homestead, managed to lose two of their remaining horses, and were forced to double up, adding yet another delay to their journey. Every moment they lost was a moment that the Iron Shepherds drew ahead of them, and beyond ‘Shadycreek Run’, Caleb could not begin to guess where they would start looking for their captured friends. No doubt a town of that reputation had many hidey-holes and secret cellars, where prisoners might be kept, or there might be a slave-market within the town itself, and even if they had been willing to simply buy back their friends, the price for even one of them would likely be far more than they could afford.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The trees around them were too thick for sunset to be anything more than a reddish glow and the fading of the last light they had used to find their way by, forcing them to break camp. And, this time, there could be no neglecting the watch. Caleb and Mollymauk drew the first shift, by general agreement, as Nott was nodding on her feet, and if Caleb took even more care than usual in setting up his silver thread to warn them of anyone approaching...well. It was only natural, after what they had just endured, and if they lost even one more of their party, they would need to find other help before they could think of rescuing the others, and that too was a delay Caleb did not know that they could afford.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t hard to light a small, smoky fire, enough to give warmth but only the very faintest flickering light in the darkness of the Thicket, as the others settled in for the night, not bothering with the tents, so as to have even less to clear away and be on the road again in the morning. He could hear the others settling in to sleep - Keg still fully-armoured, which could not be remotely comfortable - as he finished tying the last knot of his silver thread, and came over to sit by the fire with Mollymauk, who was staring out into the dark with an expression Caleb had never seen on his face before, cold dread seeping through the bond and chilling Caleb too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were a thousand ways this could go wrong. There was a not-inconsiderable chance that these Iron Shepherds would kill or enslave them all if they made a mistake. The sensible thing to do would be to run, but that option had been cut off since the moment Mollymauk kissed him in the gnoll mines outside Alfield.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was quiet, tonight, and stiller than Caleb had ever seen him, not shuffling his cards or checking for holes or places that needed mending on his coat, the anger that had animated him since they had woken to find the others taken...not gone, but now fear was creeping in. Caleb almost wanted to say something, but what comfort could he offer? Mollymauk knew the odds, probably as well as Caleb did. It was hard to believe that, just a few days ago, they’d all been together, laughing and dancing and making drunken fools of themselves, and tonight they were here, trying not to think about what might be happening to the others while they were stuck here, useless and helpless. Mollymauk’s face was drawn, his hands twisting together in front of him, staring out into the dark as if it might hold some answers. Maybe it did. Molly’s night-sight, after all, was far better than Caleb’s. It should have come as no great surprise when Mollymauk nudged him, just gently, in the side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s another...there’s another campfire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb’s head snapped up. It took a moment to see it, but- Yes, there, between the trees, there was a flicker of flames, too faint for him to make out whether it was distant or just a low, small fire from another party who didn’t want to draw attention to their presence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How far away?” he asked, peering deeper into the dark.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt Mollymauk shrug beside him. “Two hundred feet, give or take?” He paused, and glanced around at Caleb, his face only visible in the dark by the eerie light of his shining eyes. “Do you want to send a bird, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb folded his arms, his fingers just skimming over where the scars lay.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I would send one of two things,” he said in a low voice. “One is our little friend here, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk glanced back over his shoulder to check on Nott. “She’s sleeping.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or,” Caleb went on, ignoring him. “I...lose the peregrine and go back to something else a little less noticeable.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk looked back out into the dark, and then back to Caleb. “I’d say go ahead. I figure if they were meaning us any harm they wouldn’t set a fire.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>Caleb nodded, and got out the incense from his bag to begin the ritual to change Frumpkin’s shape from a peregrine falcon to a tawny owl. Mollymauk was right - they had not seen any sign of their attackers, that first night. If that fire was theirs...then they were camped nearby, unsuspecting. This could be their chance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a slow and laborious business, hopping slowly from tree to tree, just in case the owl’s flight caught unfriendly eyes - was it likely that these people would be able to recognise a familiar when they saw one? Caleb didn’t want to take the chance, either on that or on these people being petty or cruel enough to just shoot Frumpkin down for sport - but when he reached the clearing and looked down, he didn’t see a band of slavers with captives caged or chained on a cart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, two people, woman and child, perhaps mother and son - grandmother and grandson, Caleb amended, the woman was hunched and gnarled with age, but still towering even stooped nearly double -  huddled around a pot that bubbled over a meagre fire. There was a little house built between two trees behind them, a thatched roof held up by braided ropes, halfway between a hut and a tent. It didn’t look like a temporary structure, the sort of thing that might be built by a family of refugees trying to get away from the Xhorhasian border. And there were not...he couldn’t help but think that refugees...there were roads, and they were not so very close to the Front here. Why would refugees be taking the Glory Run Road, when if they were coming from the north they were well out of this war’s way, and if they had come from the south, there were other routes, safer and better-travelled, that they could have taken instead. Instead, this had all the outward appearances of somewhere that had been lived in, lived in for quite a long time, and something cold crept into Caleb’s chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman’s hands looked almost grey in this light, her body deeply hunched. Even with an owl’s night vision, it was too far from here to determine species but something twisted in the pit of Caleb’s stomach. There might be an entirely innocent explanation, but- Something didn’t feel right in all this. And Caleb had survived too long listening to that little voice that another man might have called paranoia in the back of his head to start ignoring it now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of this, he relayed to Mollymauk, trying not to raise his voice too far, difficult as it always was to calculate that when he was seeing the world through Frumpkin’s eyes. He felt Mollymauk’s warm, calloused hand come up to cover his, where Caleb was gripping his silken coat, as near as they could come to communicating.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb had heard stories like this, growing up. Just folktales, meant to frighten children into obedience, but he couldn’t get the image out of his mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He opened his eyes to find Mollymauk even closer than he had been before, and let out one long, shuddering breath. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A child?” Mollymauk asked, soft and uncertain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb managed a jerky nod. “And a- a woman, or not.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk took a few seconds to answer, his mouth half-open. “That does have a vibration, doesn’t it?” He looked around. “I’m...not at my best right now. And, if they’re human, even if they’re...friendly, I’m not-” he gestured vaguely at his face, the night-shine of his eyes, the smooth curl of his horns, the brilliance of his tattoos. “-the first face you’d want to see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was foolish of Caleb to think that, of all the Nein, Molly’s really </span>
  <em>
    <span>ought </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be the first face any traveller should wish to see. ‘Ought’ baked no bread, as his mother had said often enough when Bren had been growing up. All the same, it was hard to resist the impulse to reach for Mollymauk’s hand. He knotted his fingers in his sleeve instead, to quell the impulse, and cleared his throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah- Ja. Ja. Quickly, have to think here because...er...everyone else is sleeping and that did not look- did not look good for that little boy, but then, it doesn’t really help us with what we are doing, but then the child...what to do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have a friendly owl,” Mollymauk said encouragingly, withdrawing his hand from Caleb’s shoulder as Caleb shifted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I…” Caleb paused. “I do, yes. But I- I was just-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He closed his eyes, and let himself sink back into Frumpkin’s mind, just a whisper in the back of his familiar’s mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span> As he watched, the woman dipped a cup in the pot, and drew it out brimful of steaming...something. Soup or stew, maybe, though it was hard to tell from this distance - it might just have been water, boiled for cleanliness’ sake - to give to the child. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He swatted blindly for Molly’s shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wake- Wake the others.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk was already up and doing when Caleb pulled himself out, both hands and tail at work shaking the rest of their remaining party awake, as they came up groaning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-we’ve got a bit of a situation outside,” he was saying, as Caleb shook himself, trying very hard to remember that he was in his own body and couldn’t turn his head around a hundred and eighty degrees. He’d strained a few muscles in his neck, the first time he’d tried that, and was in no great hurry to try again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a fair bit of explaining, even knowing that, if his worst suspicions were true - and he had no way of knowing, now, if they were or not - they were wasting precious minutes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-there’s a boy, there’s an old woman, it’s got a-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not sure, but I think there is a young child that is in danger there,” Caleb said over the tail end of Molly’s sentence, “We seemed to care about the bird child, maybe we care about this one. I don’t know.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Of course,” said Nott.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ugh, why do we give a shit?” said Keg.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That, Caleb thought, probably covered the full spectrum of expected responses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott turned a reproachful look on Keg.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a baby,” she said, soft and worried, the way she always got when something got to her this deeply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg groaned. “Ah, fuck.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>With the exception of Nott, they were none of them precisely stealthy - Caleb could hide well enough in a city, where people’s eyes skimmed right over a beggar in a filthy coat muttering to himself in a corner, but in open country he was still conspicuous - but Keg had an unforeseen gift for going unseen and unheard in plate metal armour, and they managed to get in quite close before Beauregard caught her foot in a tree-root, couldn’t quite suppress a muttered curse, and the woman’s head snapped around, throwing up a hand ready to cast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You! You will not take any more of us! I will sooner die!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb couldn’t see Beauregard from here, but he could hear her:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes! Right! We are </span>
  <em>
    <span>so </span>
  </em>
  <span>going to die! I am with you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a still pause, and Caleb craned his neck, trying to see what was happening, but before he could, he heard Beauregard’s voice again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah- Yeah. I’m not bad. I’m not one of the bad guys...that you were definitely talking about? That I’m aware of, right? What bad guys are you talking about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb took a few cautious steps forward. He could see, silhouetted against the fire, the shape of the old woman he’d seen through Frumpkin’s eyes, but nothing else.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bad guys kidnapping kids, right?” Beauregard went on. “That’s- scary stuff. Trying to protect your son?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my son,” the old woman admitted, her voice hoarse and pained and rasping. “But we have lost a few, yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rest of her story was quick enough to come out - a firbolg village in the Crispvale Thicket, attacked by slavers - very likely the same slaving party that had taken Yasha and Fjord and Jester -  with only a few survivors, among them Jumnda and the boy, Ombo, who had fallen to her care while the rest of the villagers began the work of rebuilding. Caleb had got it wrong, and, as they were welcomed to share Jumnda's fire and the tea she had been brewing when Caleb first saw her, his stomach churned with the thought of what might have happened, if Beauregard hadn’t managed to learn the truth before they had begun an ill-advised attempt to ‘rescue’ Ombo from his caretaker.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hadn’t happened, and they hadn’t had a plan, as such, when they’d gone looking, but if they’d been even a little more reckless...if they’d approached this the way they had the troll in the Labenda…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You look awful,” Mollymauk’s voice said in his ear, and Caleb nearly jumped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shook his head, looking around. Yes, there Mollymauk was, holding a clay cup brimful of Jumnda’s herbal, medicinal-smelling tea, wearing a tired smile that, for the first time since Yasha was taken, seemed to reach his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- Ja,” Caleb said stupidly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Here.” Molly pressed the cup into Caleb’s hands. “I’ve already had my share, and it looks like you could use it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked down at the cup and back to Mollymauk. “That...that is quite all right,” he said awkwardly. “You don’t- There is no need for you to- I will be fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk’s tail twitched. “All right, more for me, then.” He paused. “...you’d think they’d move,” he muttered, so quietly Caleb didn’t know if he was meant to hear it. “I mean...these slavers know where they are now. If they come back...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shrugged. “It is...a whole village cannot pick up and move so easily. There are...I do not know if farming is a concern here, but even if it is not, there are the very old, and very young children who might not survive a life on the road, and where- where are they to go, then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know.” Molly rubbed his face. “I don’t- Is this just something that happens? Slavers or- or what-have-you just come and you can’t even run away…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not where I come from,” Caleb admitted. But then, he had been born in the heartland of the Empire, not so very far from Rexxentrum, where any marauders would be swiftly and sharply dealt with. Out here...they weren’t far from the border with Xhorhas, or with the Greying Wildlands to the north.  “It is...I do not think this village can rely on the protection of the Empire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Probably it’s just one more threat,” Mollymauk agreed in a low voice. “And Crownsguard aren’t always that much protection to start with, even the decent ones - and I can name about one of those I’ve met.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. “...Bryce?” he hazarded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got it in one.” Molly grimaced, and took a sip of Jumnda’s tea, before pausing, and holding out the cup again. This time, Caleb took it, and took a long gulp before he passed the cup back to Mollymauk. “The only real difference between Trostenwald and anywhere else we stopped was that something actually happened in Trostenwald that the circus couldn’t run away from.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe you. Still...it would draw attention. There is- There is a reason these people are choosing to prey on people the Empire has no interest in. I don’t- I do not think they want official attention.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were being cautious, even so. In a time of war, the official response would likely be limited even if these people did begin abducting villagers from towns under Imperial protection. That...was a good sign, wasn’t it? Attacking at night, going after small clans and villages without even the limited protection of the Crownsguard...there had been resistance here, but how much of it? They’d attacked during a celebration, when people had not been ready or expecting an attack. What would these Iron Shepherds do, if they attacked the same way?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, probably not. Not that it helps the poor sods they’ve already got. In my experience, official attention tends to lose interest about ten miles out from the watchmaster’s office.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb shot a sidelong look at him. “...your experience mostly involving running away from it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shrugged. “Sometimes these things happen. Is it my fault small-town idolmasters have no sense of humour?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb managed a weak and rasping laugh. “I- I suspect you had something to do with it, ja. But- You know, we are none of us...if any of the lawmasters we have worked for knew everything about us...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Bren, at seventeen, had met Caleb at thirty-three, he would have burned him alive as a traitor, heretic and malcontent without a moment’s thought. If he had met Mollymauk...he could not have met Mollymauk. Caleb...did not know his exact age, but he definitely was not yet thirty. He would have been a child, then, and even Trent had never asked that of his trainees. At least, not so early. Perhaps that was the purpose of the final examination - having murdered their own parents, after all, they could hardly refuse to kill anyone else on the Assembly’s order.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’d probably still be in that prison back in Hupperdook, yeah.” Mollymauk’s tail lashed behind him, and Caleb felt another curl of Mollymauk’s unease. Mollymauk, he realised suddenly, must have been every bit as unhappy in that prison as Caleb himself - he hadn’t dwelt on the thought, but their connection made it difficult to miss how little Mollymauk liked it, whenever they were forced to venture underground. At the time, though, Caleb had barely registered it, so caught up in his own head that he’d barely noticed Molly at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk made a noise that might’ve started out as a laugh, but ran out of steam before it reached his lips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If anyone knew everything about us, we’d be in trouble - and that includes ourselves!” Mollymauk nudged him, not ungently, and held out the cup again. Caleb took it, and looked over at Mollymauk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Perhaps, without the bond, he’d have thought it was just the shadows cast by the firelight, but Mollymauk looked even worse than Caleb felt. He and Yasha were, Caleb remembered suddenly, perhaps as close as Caleb and Nott - closer, even. Certainly, Yasha seemed to be privy to parts of Mollymauk’s history, where Caleb had only very recently confided in Nott, no matter how much he might care for her. And he could not imagine what he would have done, if Nott had been one of those taken. She might well have been - the attack on the firbolg village was another hint of that. They had taken Fjord, Jester and Yasha - a half-orc, a tiefling and an aasimar. And now a village of firbolgs. The underground slave trade was not something Caleb had ever been in a position to learn much about, even when he had been being trained to enforce the law of the Empire - or the will of the Cerberus Assembly, which often superseded it - but even he had heard whispers of the trade in ‘exotics’, and the prices certain nobles would pay. He still didn’t know why these Iron Shepherds had left Mollymauk and Nott behind, but the thought of waking up to find everyone gone but him and Beauregard made a cold feeling spread through Caleb’s chest, even moreso than the horror of the situation they had woken to. With four of them - five, now - they could at least hope to stage a rescue. With only two of them...it would have been suicide even to try.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I haven’t asked,” he said awkwardly. “How- How are you bearing up?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk didn’t look at him. “...not- Not brilliantly,” he admitted, in a brittle sort of voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t know what else he’d been expecting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They will...we may have the advantage of speed,” he offered. “They would need at least one cart to transport this many prisoners. If there is a convoy, it will not be moving terribly fast.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” Molly grimaced.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And the more carts they have, the harder- the harder it will be to defend them. If there are only five of these Shepherds, as Keg says there are, they will be spread thin.” They couldn’t rely on there being more than one cart, admittedly, but they could worry about the tactics once they were closer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb,” Mollymauk asked, finally looking around to raise his eyebrows at him. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb let out a breath. “...I am not very good at it,” he muttered. “And it is pointless anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others were still gone, after all. He was trying not to think about that. They had known each other only a month, after all. It was ludicrous to expect he should be this attached after only a month, that their loss could hurt him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If they could take the Shepherds on the road, they could reunite with the rest of the Nein within days. Caleb had to cling to that. They- It was only practical. The rings made it impossible for him to leave Mollymauk, who had already made it very clear that he would not leave any of their companions in the slavers’ hands, and finding another group like this one, that would be willing to trust both Caleb and Nott and which was colourful enough for them to disappear into the background, would be very hard to do. Therefore, he could not leave them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should probably sleep,” Mollymauk said after a moment, which wasn’t a denial, pulling away. “If we’re going to catch up to them tomorrow, we might as well be rested for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...ja,” Caleb said after one confused moment. “Ja, you’re probably right.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and tried to get a grip. It would be better if they were rested tomorrow, whether or not they caught up to the Iron Shepherds then or later. All the same, it felt like a wrench to stand up and find his way over to a corner close enough to the fire that he could be warm for the night, and far enough to keep the nightmares at bay. Mollymauk had been warm, he found himself thinking, lying half-curled in the mud at the edge of the circle of firelight. Almost too warm, like sitting next to a furnace. The sort of warmth that made some small, selfish part of Caleb’s mind want to just bury his face in Mollymauk’s shoulder and burrow in for the winter. He pushed the thought away as if burnt, and rolled over to face the fire, hoping the flames would drive any other thoughts from his mind. Unfortunately, that also meant a clearer view of Mollymauk, who had curled up on the far side of the fire, his tail twitching in his sleep the way Frumpkin’s did sometimes, when he deigned to sleep on this plane at all. Frumpkin...Caleb wished he could afford to return Frumpkin to feline form, just for the night. He needed the comfort of soft fur under his fingertips, a low, rumbling purr against his chest. But they also needed the bird’s eyes, even if in daylight an owl would be far less use to them than the peregrine had been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb slept fitfully, that night, and dreamed of fire. He woke, aching, in the grey light of dawn, to find that their hosts for the night had been up for a while already. The boy, Ombo, was already sitting up by the fire, watching a row of small squirrels that had been spitted over the fire to cook.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In daylight, he looked younger than Caleb had first thought - maybe seven or eight, in human terms, where he’d first taken the boy for being nearer to ten or twelve - and...not ill-treated exactly, but clearly wary in a way that made something in the pit of Caleb’s stomach twist in sympathy. Just three days since the attack on the village. Had his parents been among those killed or taken? How narrowly had he escaped them? And now, here he was, dealing with five random assholes who might help rescue them, if only because they happened to be going the same way. How much of all this did he really understand? Or had it all just been a haze of adults talking over his head, the way that the Reapers, the fear of losing the farm, the fear of a hard winter had been to Caleb when he was that age?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>An owl doing a little dance admittedly wasn’t much help with a loss like that, but- Well, it was more help than anything else Caleb could do short of finding and killing these slavers, and while that was definitely on the agenda, it could hardly be achieved here without risking the firbolg village, even if the Iron Shepherds had intended to return this way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The door to Jumnda's hut swung open, and Jumnda herself came out, carrying a small cloth pouch that looked even smaller, cupped in her two hands, each large enough to fit over Caleb’s face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I see you have awoken,” she said, coming over to the fire, where the five of them and Ombo were gathered. “I know you’ll be on your way shortly, but maybe this can help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She twitched aside the top of the pouch, and produced a clump of dried, greyish moss that Caleb could not for the life of him identify, except that it seemed to be exactly the sort of thing Mollymauk was always looking for whenever they found a town with an apothecary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk will take that,” he muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Always,” Molly agreed, plucking the moss straight out of Jumnda's hand and sniffing it experimentally, his nose wrinkling a little as he glanced down at the moss with a speculative sort of air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should- ah- should you find yourself in a- a wounded state, this should help you with some rapid recovery of wounds,” Jumnda said quickly,</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you smoke it?” Nott asked, standing up on tiptoe to peer at the moss in Molly’s hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it is crumbled and then ingested. You can also put some in the actual wounds, if you like, but it is meant for ingestion.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See?” Nott said, leaning over to talk to Keg. “People are just nice sometimes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg’s stone-faced expression didn’t change at all. “Never in my experience.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Only sometimes,” Caleb felt compelled to offer. Not terribly </span>
  <em>
    <span>often</span>
  </em>
  <span>, admittedly, but...sometimes. Even on the street, there had been the occasional coin thrown his way, and then there had been Nott, and her friendship, and a grace he could not hope to deserve. Caleb had more often been a witness to this sort of thing than a recipient, but it existed, all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk, meanwhile, was asking after their route, tense and anxious in a way Caleb had never felt from him before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-north on the path, I suppose?” was all Caleb heard of it, but Jumnda was already spreading her hands in apology.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just...north is what I know. North, northeast?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk nodded. “We’ll see what we can do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s all I can ask.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All things being equal…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If you find her and...whatever state you find her...um. If it’s not a good state, will you promise me to at least bring her back so we can give her a proper burial?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg hissed through her teeth. “This ain’t part of my deal.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If it’s possible,” Mollymauk said, after one long, pained moment, as Jumnda's eyes flicked across each of their faces in turn, “We’ll see what we can do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jumnda lowered her eyes, her shoulders slumping, just a little. “That’s all I can ask.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“All things being equal,” Mollymauk repeated, which probably meant that he didn’t actually know whether it would be possible, and was trying desperately to find </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>reassuring to say, and failing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jumnda swallowed. “Anyway- I thank you. Ombo thanks you. And-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk shot a glance over towards the boy, and peeled off from the group a little to go and crouch down in front of Ombo, all his white teeth flashing as he smiled. As Caleb watched, Mollymauk produced a card from...Caleb couldn’t quite see where. Probably it had been up his sleeve the whole time, but he hadn’t seen Molly draw it. As Caleb watched, Molly tried to flick the card away or...something like that...and fumbled it, one of the charms from his horns - the little silvery one with the crescent moon that dangled from close to the tip of his left-hand horn - not quite appearing in his hand as if by magic, and the card not quite disappearing back up his sleeve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was hard not to laugh, and Ombo certainly made no effort at it. Caleb did, and still couldn’t quite suppress a little twitch at one corner of his mouth because...it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>cute, honestly. Far too cute for the situation they were in, but that was Mollymauk all over, Caleb thought, as Molly dropped the charm into Ombo’s hand and straightened up, dusting off his many-coloured coat as he went before reaching out with one hand to deftly scritch Frumpkin behind the ears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked away quickly, his ears burning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you both,” he said hurriedly, wrenching his gaze back to Jumnda, who inclined her head in return.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you for...hopefully doing some good in a very dark world.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb coughed, and looked down at his boots. “Well,” he muttered. “Dark business at hand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you know someone named Pumat Sol?” Nott butted in, mercifully taking some of the pressure off Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jumnda didn’t, as it turned out, nor was there any real reason why she should - this could hardly be the only firbolg village in all of the Empire, and there was no saying that Pumat Sol had come from any of them - and after a few last awkward pleasantries they took their leave, riding northward to join up again with the Glory Run Road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was another hard day’s ride, and even with breaks to walk the horses, they set a punishing pace, enough, perhaps, to give them the lead and cut these slavers off before they ever reached Shadycreek Run. They made camp that night in a stony valley, not so very far off the road, with no better shelter than an outcropping of stone, not enough to keep the wind off, or shield them from prying eyes. Even Caleb’s silver thread seemed little enough protection - he had put it up the night that the others were taken, after all, and little enough good it had done them then - but he put it up anyway, since it was all they had, and curled up in his actual bedroll this time, to the sounds of Nott and Keg getting settled in to take the first watch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt as though he had hardly had time to close his eyes before someone - Mollymauk, who else but Mollymauk, Caleb knew it was him before he opened his eyes - was shaking him awake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Last watch,” Molly whispered, pulling his hand away quickly, as if he’d been expecting Caleb to have a worse reaction. “Do you want me to take it with you, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Was- Nein. That is- No, Mollymauk. I can manage.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“You’re sure?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja, I’m sure.” Caleb hauled himself painfully to his feet, his knees protesting the way they always did after a night in the wild. “You...you should get some sleep. You’re exhausted.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was, too. Caleb could feel it. They’d pushed themselves past the point of exhaustion, today, and while Molly had borne up as well as many of them, and better than Caleb, it had clearly worn on him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk paused for a moment, then nodded jerkily, and stepped aside, making for his own bedroll, closer to the fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The shallower end of the outcropping in whose dubious shelter they were camped was just high enough for Caleb to sit on, and commanded a good view of the rest of the valley, and the road beyond. If the Iron Shepherds came this way, he would be the first to see, and then...and then what?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could leave now, in the night, without any of them realising it. Possibly they would never realise he hadn’t been taken too until they caught up with these Iron Shepherds and then...then it would be too late, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk would know. Mollymauk would be able to find him. And Molly’s promise not to pursue him had only gone so far as that one night at the Pillow Trove. If Caleb abandoned them now...he did not see it as a reason for revenge. But there was no saying what the others would think of it. They might come after him, out of concern or for revenge...it made little enough difference. Caleb could feel Mollymauk coming, if he was pursued, could keep always one step ahead. What was one more thing to run from? Why- Why was he still here?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look at the lot of you,” he muttered, staring out over the cluster of sleeping bodies, just barely illuminated by the faint and flickering fire, his hands already rubbing soothing circles on his arms. “Look at these people…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The snow was falling heavier now, not enough to stick but enough that the fire’s warmth did not seem enough. Caleb shivered, and huddled a little deeper into his coat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I should go right now. I don’t know you at all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What was there to bind him here, after all, except a magical accident and a hope of protection that had seen him venturing into more and more danger instead?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the dark, his eyes found Mollymauk, the firelight illuminating just the shape of his horns, the shadow of the peacock tattoo.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look at this one! He’s like a- a walking rainbow, what is this? Nothing I would have chosen had I been allowed to choose! Nothing they would have- It makes no sense. Why are you- He’s a circus performer, he’s not going to help you. If you were going to chain someone to you, it should have been someone you could </span>
  <em>
    <span>use</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Beauregard had her bedroll next to Molly, for all their not-entirely-playful antagonism. She slept curled up tight, her face tucked under her cloak in lieu of a blanket, so that he couldn’t see anything of her but her cloak and, sticking out at the other end, her feet, still in their heavy boots. “You told him- You told them- This one you told everything to, to try and get into a library. You learned </span>
  <em>
    <span>nothing</span>
  </em>
  <span>! On your gamble, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>failed</span>
  </em>
  <span>. You’re stupid. Smart as you are, you’re stupid with this. She could cave in everything! They both could. He, at least, has some reason to not want to be rid of you, or he hasn’t figured out that he could kill you and get free of this that way. What will happen when he does? He’s not...maybe he’s not hard enough to do that yet, but how long before you push him that far? The three that have been stolen: yeah, they’re nice. Two of them. One’s kind. Weird, but kind. And she didn’t have to be. She has no </span>
  <em>
    <span>reason </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be-  One tried to kill you. The other one, she’s...adorable, but- Stupid.” He drummed his fingers on the rock, and his eyes fell on Nott. Her bedroll was next to his, and for once she hadn’t curled in closer, to try and leech off his warmth as they slept, even with this snow coming down, and even colder nights to come. “This one here,” he said, so quiet even he could barely hear himself speak. “What do you- What do you expect to do with her? How is she going to help you do what you want to do? She can watch your back-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Frumpkin gave a low, almost nervous-sounding hoot, where he was perched at the other end of the rock.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, you- Don’t worry, you’re fine.” More than fine. He did not know he would last a day without Frumpkin. Nott, though- Nott was...she had been kind to him. But. But she needed his protection as much as he needed hers. But sometimes she would drink, and nearly get herself killed looking for traps she couldn’t muster the fine motor control to disarm even when she knew how. “She’s as much a liability as anything else!” he muttered, and realised a moment too late that he’d been talking with his hands all this while, when he’d thought he trained himself out of that habit a decade and more ago. He tucked his hands away up his sleeves. “Oh- You know you’re fucking mad when you’re gesticulating this much…” He stared out, away from the group, across the valley. They were just two days from Shadycreek Run. Farther north than he had ever been in his life before this. If he set out to the west now, he might reach Nogvurot before the others were in any position to follow. “You should just go,” he told himself, more firmly now. “You have told too much. You have told too much. I am going to go…” he swallowed. “It’s time to go.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could almost picture it - a few days or weeks of painful, hungry marching across open country, and at the end of it another city, and a few more cons to run, and back to the life he had had before the Nein, before Nott, even. He had survived it once. He would survive it again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, somehow, he couldn’t will himself to stand and gather his bedroll and slip away in the dark. Not even as the sky lightened from black to ink-blue to a sickly grey-white. The sun came up over the horizon, like the pale yolk of a great egg diffused in water, and the others began to stir in their bedrolls, but still Caleb could not leave.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a chill, drear morning, with dark clouds on the horizon that carried with them the promise of more snow before nightfall, and none of them was ready to waste much time before getting back on the road north to Shadycreek Run. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They wove on and off the road for the rest of the day, not wanting to lose sight of it, but not wanting to be seen either, in case they came upon their quarry before they were ready to make a fight of it. They’d had one near miss already, with a merchant caravan heading south, and another might make the difference between rescuing the others and joining them in chains.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was mid-afternoon before they saw the three carts ahead of them, two larger and one smaller, and Keg drew in a sharp hiss of breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This might be them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Beauregard breathed, her eyes flicking over to Keg.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Nott echoed, looking up from Jester’s sketchbook from where she was perched in front of Caleb in the saddle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did we catch up to them?”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“We may have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott tugged at Caleb’s sleeve:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb, look at this picture of you in Jester’s book. It’s really funny-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not the time, Nott!” Keg snapped from the next horse over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, no?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard, though, was still watching the carts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We shouldn’t…” She reined in, and looked around at the rest of them. “We shouldn’t clue them off that we’re here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, let’s slow our pace,” Mollymauk agreed, casting a wary look at the carts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard gave a distracted little nod. “Kay. Maybe a couple of us could flank around, see if-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good idea,” Mollymauk said, a little too quickly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg was squinting off at the carts, and for a moment, Caleb thought she looked almost afraid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can your owl see if there's...a big human man, fighter-looking guy?” she asked, glancing over at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb paused. Owls were...not ideal, for this sort of thing in the daytime. They were night hunters, and Frumpkin had already expressed his displeasure more than once at having to be awake during the day in this form. It wouldn’t be impossible, but…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bigger than average-sized man, you mean?” he asked foolishly - what else would she mean - trying to crane his neck to get a good look at the semi-distant figures on the carts ahead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keg admitted after a moment. “He’s pretty surly, intimidating-looking. And, uh, he might have a half-elf with him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked back up at the carts. “Well, we’re about to get into it, ja?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think we should wait until they start to set up camp,” Mollymauk interjected, still staring fixedly at the carts, looking for...what? They wouldn’t be carrying obvious cages, not this far south, where imperial law still ran and there was a chance of running into a legion of the Righteous Brand whom they would need to either bribe or talk their way past. “They’ve got to stop at some point,” he added, more quietly, not taking his eyes off the carts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t even know who they are yet, though!” Nott protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, since Keg had been decidedly cagey on the subject of why, exactly, this big human man was someone to look out for, it seemed like just the right time to try and get some better answers, before it came to a fight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’d been telling the truth - it would be five on five. Two magic-users, a rogue and two physical fighters, one of whom wielded a glaive long enough to make close-quarters fighting a difficult proposition. Magical obfuscation over the carts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And apparently their source was even better than they had realised, since Keg was a former member of the group.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably a better man than Caleb would’ve been shocked or horrified. He knew his father would have been ashamed to hear that his son had broken bread with a slaver, no matter how repentant. But- Well. Whatever Keg had done during her time with the Iron Shepherds, Caleb had likely done worse in the Empire’s service.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Following the carts with Frumpkin flying overhead, far enough up that it might not be immediately apparent that he was there unless one of the Shepherds looked directly up, Caleb counted seven people, riding horses or driving carts. Two more than Keg had warned them about - apparently the Iron Shepherds had been hiring since she’d left them - and no way of telling what the capacities of the additional two fighters were. They wouldn’t be going in blind, but it was- They knew so little, now. If they got this wrong...they might not get a chance for a second attempt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have a plan,” Mollymauk spoke up, once Caleb returned to himself. “It’s a bit of a crazy plan. They’re carrying the means of their own undoing. If we can free whoever is in those cages, we get a lot of allies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t know if it’s your friends!” Keg retorted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk raised his eyebrows at her. “Anybody in there I’m sure is going to have...feelings toward these people.”</span>
  <span><br/>
</span>
  <span>“Look-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, we wait until they camp?” Beauregard interrupted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mollymauk nodded. “I like waiting until they camp, coming in at night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard gave a little answering nod - Caleb had never seen them agree this much in the whole time they’d been travelling together - and then looked back to Keg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What were you going to say, Keg?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They-” Keg stopped, drew in a breath, started again. “When they take people, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>break </span>
  </em>
  <span>them. So, if you’re counting on whoever’s in those cages to help, they’re not gonna be able to. So it’s going to be five versus seven, even if we attack at night.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Like...mentally break them?” Beauregard asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Both.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt an odd coldness coming over him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There had been time enough for that, if these Shepherds had wanted to break their captives. Everyone, no matter how defiant, broke on the third day. And, unlike the Volstrucker, the Shepherds would have no concern for accurate information. No use for confessions, either. A person who broke under torture did not become a reliable source. What they became was a beaten dog, willing to agree to almost anything to escape the threat of further pain. And for a slaver...that would be all they wanted. There would be no reason to go slowly, to start with disturbed sleep or false information or the pretence of friendliness to gain trust. But-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a chance, at least. A slim one, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Three carts, and prisoners, and they would have needed to follow the road. To simply stay ahead of three people on horseback, unencumbered by much baggage, the Shepherds’ pace would have to have been brutal, and that- that might not leave enough time for much else. Neglect alone would do some of the work, but not all of it. Though- If they had been denied food, if they had been denied water, the Shepherds’ prisoners would likely be too weak to fight even if they hadn’t broken entirely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were too many factors here, they didn’t have enough information, and they couldn’t afford to wait for more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This is our best chance,” he said, interrupting Nott and Mollymauk, where they were discussing the plan for a night attack. “Because we don’t want them to get to their destination, because there they are surrounded by many, many friends.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or a fortress or something,” Nott added.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. Now is the time.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The odds weren’t great, but seven against five was better than however many guards and strong walls between them and their companions. And a night attack, at least, might provide some advantage - perhaps they could free the prisoners first, in secrecy, and attack in strength once they were sure that there were no innocent bystanders to be caught in the crossfire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a while to work out what they were going to do - an ambush, not a night attack - and their final plan of action was one of the more complicated they’d come up with since leaving Zadash. Neither gnolls nor merrows nor giant sewer-dwelling spiders had really required much in the way of tactical planning. Nor, really, had Cleff Tinkertop’s mechanical warden - at least, nothing more complicated than ‘try to damage it more than it damages us’. Not so this time. They couldn’t just drop a fireball on every cart and call it done, not without killing the Shepherds’ captives, and that- that would defeat their whole purpose in doing this. The crux of the plan, though, was simple - block the road, slow the slavers, and kill them all before they recovered enough to mount an effective defence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, it couldn’t be that simple</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The alarm sounded just an hour after dawn, early enough that it must still have been dark when the Iron Shepherds set out on the road. With three carts and prisoners to consider, that was almost impressive, if it hadn’t been so foolhardy, but perhaps they had meant to beat the snow. If that was it, they had only half-succeeded - it was coming down now, a light fluffy dusting of white, not enough even to soak through Caleb’s coat, even those few flakes that had got down the back of his neck somehow as he scrambled out of the one tent that the five of them had shared, piled together like puppies against the cold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They- They’re coming,” he managed, his head snapping around, even knowing that he wouldn’t be able to see the first of the carts yet, not unless something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now?” Nott demanded, her fingers going instinctively to the stock of her crossbow, petting it as if to reassure herself that it was still there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ja, now!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should- Places,” Mollymauk said quickly, already gathering up his swords.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beauregard was rummaging in one of the bags. “We should- Here, Nott, it’s your turn.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb had half-opened his mouth to ask what was so important that it was worth a delay now when Beauregard found what she was looking for. The Dodecahedron. The ‘beacon’, whatever it was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably it wasn’t altogether safe to throw wildly powerful magical artefacts around. On the other hand, the thing had survived being carried around in one or other of their packs this long without any apparent ill-effect, so being thrown about wasn’t that big a stretch. And, anyway, Nott had caught it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was always a little unsettling, watching someone make use of the Dodecahedron, their eyes open and glassy as it showed them...whatever it was it meant to show them. Caleb had never asked, and Nott had never volunteered what she saw in it, any more than he had attempted to tell her about all those others...most of them were not even ‘Calebs’. He didn’t want to know what other turns Nott’s life could have taken - there were a hundred fates worse than death that a little goblin girl could meet with in the Dwendalian Empire. He didn’t want to have to think of Nott suffering any one of them. For a moment, he caught himself wondering who Mollymauk saw.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott came out of it with an odd look on her face, half pain and half...Caleb didn’t know. Wistfulness, maybe. Whatever it had been, there was no time for it now. The Iron Shepherds were minutes away - half an hour, at most - and they might never have another chance like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was a scramble to get into position - Nott hidden in the hollow log, Keg hidden behind a nearby tree, and Caleb well out of the way behind a clump of bushes, just waiting for their quarry to appear.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb!” Nott’s voice hissed in his ear through the wire. “If anything goes shitty, I’m going to throw my flask of oil on- on the first cart. Light it on fire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Understood.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t take long, after that. Not objectively, anyway. Subjectively was another matter, but that was how it always went. The worst part of any job was the waiting, and the last few seconds of waiting before the screaming started always felt like an eternity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But there it was. The first cart rattled into view. The driver was small, not very much taller than Nott - Protto, Caleb assumed - and the cart a simple two-horse affair, not covered and disguised to appear laden with barrels and sacks of grain, not very much larger than their own abandoned cart, back outside Hupperdook. If there were captives in there, it could be any number from five to twenty, depending on how many the Shepherds were willing to cram into a cage. They had not, he realised suddenly, stopped to ask how many from the firbolg village had been taken, and in what condition - they might be about to free the equivalent of a village militia or a crowd of unarmed men, women and children all of whom would be more liability than aid in a fight - but it was a bit late to be thinking of that oversight now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cart rattled closer. Another came into view behind it, so close that any sudden stop might cause a disastrous collision. Caleb couldn’t make out who was driving it from this distance. There was, though, no mistaking the big, bald-headed human walking alongside it. Lorenzo. Through the bond, he felt something flare, dark and bloody and determined. They were twenty feet away now. Fifteen. Ten. He could see another, taller figure - the half-orc druid that Keg had mentioned, perhaps - walking towards the back of the second cart. He would need to be sure of catching her in his spell. The flask of molasses felt slippery in his hand, and he tightened his fingers around it, waiting. Five feet now. The final, one-horse cart was straggling behind a little - how many cages would that one fit? Maybe one, at a push, big enough for ten or twelve people if you weren’t fussy about how tightly you squeezed them in - and Caleb swallowed. This wouldn’t work if the carts were too spread out, they were only going to have one shot-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first cart drew level, and the tree went crashing down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It caught the cart square across the driver’s bench, and Caleb heard a high-pitched shriek from the halfling, Protto, as he threw himself backwards and out of the way, the horses rearing, still caught in their traces, and there was a loud protesting bray from the horses behind as the driver of the second cart hauled hard on the reins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb knew his cue. He dipped his fingers into the molasses and cast Slow over as much of the area around the second cart as he could cover. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt </span>
  </em>
  <span>it as the spell took- And as it didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two of them, Lorenzo and his druid companion, had shaken it off. Two out of six, and one of them a spellcaster. But only two. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>From this vantage, Caleb could see Nott only as a small shadow in a hooded cloak, streaking across the ground, weaving between horses, wheels and fighters until the pot of oil caught Lorenzo square in the chest, dousing him in sticky, viscous fluid. One spell now and he’d go up like a tinderbox, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t know he could afford another episode. Not now. Not with all of them at stake.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked back - he couldn’t see Nott, now, had she made it to the cages all right? - and saw Beauregard, mid-leap, the Iron Shepherds moving as if they moved through water as she landed, and it seemed like she had hit the ground running, already racing across towards the Shepherds’ druid - Dwelma, Caleb thought, unless that was the other magic-user - and already bringing down her staff in a wicked swipe that should’ve taken Dwelma out at the knees. She staggered a little, but kept her feet even as Beau brought her other hand out for an open-palmed strike to the breastbone that knocked Dwelma back almost to the cart. The half-elf, the sorcerer, was stumbling back, saying...something, Caleb couldn’t make out what, the words distorted by the Slow spell and the distance between them. Her hands were moving slowly through the motions of a spell he was too far away to identify, her head slowly turning to face him, up on the hill and, he had thought, out of the worst of it, as the sorcerer - Caleb thought she was a sorcerer, at least, but it was hard to tell without knowing a person, and even then it was open to doubt - half-staggered, half-shambled up the hill, fighting at every step against the drag of the Slow spell.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You got that one!” Molly called - he was there on the crest of the hill, still in hiding, but not for long - and Caleb felt him humming with the need to move, to make these people </span>
  <em>
    <span>pay</span>
  </em>
  <span>, a restless energy that ran through Caleb’s muscles, so that it almost hurt to be still.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah!” came the answering call from Keg, down in the valley between the two hills, and as soon as he heard it, Mollymauk </span>
  <em>
    <span>moved</span>
  </em>
  <span>, sprinting for the far side of the hill, where the sorcerer was still trying to drag her way up, before he popped cleanly out of existence, only to appear again next to the half-orc Dwelma, his blades already arcing through the air, Summer’s Dance ablaze with radiant light and his carnival-glass scimitar glittering with frost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Keg!” a man’s voice - Lorenzo’s, it had to be Lorenzo’s, one of the only two Caleb hadn’t caught in his spell - roared out. “I don’t know what you’re trying here, but I think the line’s been drawn!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was making for the horses now - no, </span>
  <em>
    <span>between </span>
  </em>
  <span>the horses, apparently heedless of the panicked beasts’ hooves, the risk of them bolting or trampling or biting in their desperation to get away - making for the  middle cart. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey! Move aside!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He raised a hand up into a casting position - a </span>
  <em>
    <span>casting position</span>
  </em>
  <span>, when Keg had only implied there were two spellcasters in the whole group that she’d known - as an arrow whistled through the air, catching Mollymauk in the shoulder. Caleb heard him cry out, saw the way the body jerked as the first arrow hit him, the second following just seconds later, embedding itself in the flesh of Mollymauk’s upper arm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sorcerer was getting into position now, she was halfway up the hill, and Caleb didn’t think before reaching out with his gloved hand to throw a fireball in that direction. The first shot went wide, but the second found its mark, even as the third went wide, and Caleb dropped to his back, out of sight again, his ears ringing a little, with nothing in his mind but fire and the stench of cooking meat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A crossbow bolt was buried in the ground by his ear when he felt himself again, and he could hear the sounds of fighting close at hand, and then all at once-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt like the faint pop in the ears of the barometric pressure dropping before a storm, as, all at once, his Slow spell was gone, and Caleb was blinking away the brilliant colours of a Hypnotic Pattern, trying desperately to see through the kaleidoscopic whirl of it to what was happening in the narrow valley.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What he saw was ice, bursting from Lorenzo’s hands, a howling, roiling wedge of freezing air. The wind whipped and screamed around them, a biting, gnawing wind. A Cone of Cold, and a powerful one, and this- This was more than any of them had bargained for, what </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>he?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Am I going to have to make a lesson here?” Caleb heard Lorenzo call out, his voice carried on the howl of the wind as Caleb dragged himself, slow and laborious, up to a crouch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The others were being buffeted by the cold winds, but they hadn’t frozen in place, at least, and even as Caleb watched, Beauregard brought up her staff again, whirling it in a humming arc to fetch Dwelma a blow to the head that sent the druid crumpling and left blood on the wood of Beauregard’s staff. For a moment, Caleb couldn’t see where Beauregard had got to, but then- She had sprung up onto one of the horses - somehow managing to single out one horse in that heaving mass of panicking horseflesh, and, even more miraculously, to get the horse under control as it reared and plunged in harness, even as the sorcerer managed to get one more spell off. Whatever the spell had been, it glanced off Mollymauk and Beauregard as if it were nothing, and even from this distance, Caleb could see her face twist with rage. He fumbled for another spell - one good fireball, that was all he would need, if he could only get to his feet to aim it right - but before he could, Mollymauk was already moving, his scimitars lashing out in two arcing blows that Lorenzo caught on the haft of his glaive, striking it against the earth. Mollymauk spat a maledict, and for a moment-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Caleb almost thought he saw Lorenzo stagger...but only for a moment. One great, meaty hand closed around Mollymauk’s neck, lifting him clean off his feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“An example it is,” Lorenzo said, loud enough to be heard even from this distance. One fireball now would finish him-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it would finish Mollymauk too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The glaive took Molly through the chest, and Caleb-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb didn’t think.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt more than heard himself scream. For a moment, it was as if the rings, this connection between him and Mollymauk, unwanted and unlooked-for as it was, was a single line of fraying golden thread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Caleb, desperate, hopeless, not knowing how he knew what to do, reached out across it and </span>
  <em>
    <span>pulled</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, it almost seemed as though nothing had happened. Not to him, and not to Mollymauk. Lorenzo pulled the glaive back. He looked almost confused, his hand still tight around Mollymauk’s throat, his chest unmarked where the glaive had sunk in. There was no pain. Not at first. Even all the dull aches and pains of the day seemed to have faded for a moment. No, not faded-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb looked down, and saw blood bloom dark across his tunic, and the pain hit him, all at once like a wall of sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...huh.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lorenzo glanced around. Across the valley, his eyes met Caleb’s - at some point, he had risen to his feet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was swaying on them now, black spots dancing across his vision. And then, all at once, his knees gave out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Loyal man you’ve got there,” Lorenzo said in a carrying voice. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Caleb’s mind babbled, sing-song, Caleb had never had a loyalty he hadn’t betrayed. “Your lover?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb heard Mollymauk’s voice, snarling, but he couldn’t make out the words.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lorenzo laughed. “Well, whatever he is, he just volunteered to die for you. Let’s see if you’ll do the same. Take him!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were hands on Caleb’s shoulders. Dragging him. His shirt was soaked through now, his tunic too, and his coat could not be far behind it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wanted to struggle, but his thoughts scattered, his limbs would not obey him. He could hear a wordless yell of rage-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then nothing at all.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Okay. This one took a while. And it's longer than I was expecting. Part of that is that we are now in uncharted waters, but the other part is just...me being self-indulgent.<br/>I am, if anything, more nervous about this chapter than any that have come before it, so...be kind to me?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was snowing now - thick, fluffy white flakes that settled on Molly’s shoulders and on the ground, powdering softly over the places where Caleb’s blood had sunk into the earth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly could still feel where the glaive had gone in, in a distant sort of way. Not the white-hot, blinding pain of the moment, but something that dully throbbed with every heartbeat, as if to remind him that every beat brought him closer to a second death.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except, of course, it hadn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His chest, when he looked down, was smooth and unmarked - well, unmarked except for his own scars, standing out in straight pale lines against the skin - with nothing to show for his impalement but a tear in his shirt and a trail of blood across the grass of the valley, already soaking into the snow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He heard Beau dragging herself to her feet, where the sorcerer’s last spell had thrown her halfway across the valley during that last, desperate rush to rescue Caleb, even knowing that with an injury like that, all it would mean was that he’d die with his friends around him. Molly watched her get up without quite seeing it, the afterimage of Caleb’s white and bloodless face still seared across the backs of his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a soft rustle of wings, and Molly looked up as Frumpkin, still owl-shaped, settled on his shoulder, those vicious talons biting into the flesh through Molly’s coat and shirt and jerkin.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could feel the awful, hollow place in his chest where the glaive should have gone straight through him, could feel the sluggish beat of a second heart, as if it were tucked in beside his own. There was nothing in the bond - not the hazy, dreamlike impressions of sleep but something worse. Caleb, rattling north on one of the Iron Shepherds’ carts, still clinging to life, but only just.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, all at once-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt it first like a flare of warmth, deep in his chest. A steady, luminous warmth that spread all through him, and then receded into a single point of heat before it was gone, and with it...even the shadow of pain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Molly didn’t realise what must have happened, but then- He reached out blindly, trying to find-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was still to the north, and moving faster. Alive. Truly alive, in better health than he had felt in days, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...they healed him?” Molly muttered. “Why- Why would they heal him…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because they want to make it last,” Nott said quietly, taking all of them by surprise. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken since the carts had finally rattled out of sight, battle-worn and damaged as they were, taking Caleb with them, her last parting shot ricocheting off the unseen cover of the final cart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott swallowed, her fingers working spasmodically on the stock of her crossbow, her eyes wide.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They- It wouldn’t be as much of a punishment to them, if they just let him die now. They’ll want to- To-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott, Molly remembered suddenly, had been a torturer’s assistant once.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She knew exactly what Caleb would be facing now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll get him back,” he promised, because he couldn’t do anything else. Had the Shepherds really thought that would do it? Could they have been that stupid? Yasha taken, Caleb taken...Fjord and Jester taken too...had they believed for one moment that that would make him stop? That they’d all just cut their losses and go back to Hupperdook, or to whatever homes the Shepherds imagined they had to go back to?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott rounded on him. “I know we will!” she snapped. “You had better- You did this! If you hadn’t- If you didn’t give him- It should have been you! Why wasn’t it you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nott,” Beau gritted out, reaching out to put a hand on Nott’s shoulder. “Nott, that’s not-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No! Caleb-” Nott’s voice cracked. “If Caleb was here, we could- We could see where they were going, we could- He wasn’t even in their way. He was supposed to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>safe</span>
  </em>
  <span>…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Molly admitted, his throat so raw that every word hurt to get out. “I- I thought he’d be all right too. I don’t…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No-one was ever safe in a battle, but- Caleb had been well out of the way, and the rest of them had been keeping the Iron Shepherds busy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn’t known that Caleb could do...whatever that had been. Had he always been able to do that? Or- If it had been anyone else, maybe it could just be a spell Caleb knew, but...well, they were both involved, which meant it might be the rings again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It doesn’t matter what you </span>
  <em>
    <span>thought</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” Nott half-snarled, half-shrieked, shaking Beau off and reaching jerkily for her flask. “You- You’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>they took him!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly could hear the blood echoing in his ears. Taste it, on his tongue. Feel it pounding through his veins, where it had never spilt at all, where Caleb had taken a killing blow for him and would have died, if his captors hadn’t wanted to hurt him more-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He felt as though he might be sick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey!” Beau snapped, stepping between them. “That’s enough! Look, we’ve got four missing friends now, and that fucking asshole Lorenzo has them! We do not need to be having a stupid fucking fight about whose fault it is when we still need to find our fucking friends! We clear here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott gave a jerky, reluctant little nod. Molly...muttered something, he couldn’t remember what.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good. So, before we do anything </span>
  <em>
    <span>else</span>
  </em>
  <span>-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau turned away.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t quite see what happened next, except that it ended with Keg on her back with Beau’s hand fisted in the neck of her shirt under the mail, and Beau kneeling over her with her mouth tight and a merciless look in her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you think that maybe telling us that Lorenzo was a high </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking </span>
  </em>
  <span>level magic-user would’ve been-” she started, her voice rising into a snarl. “Or are you still fucking working with them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t know!” Keg snapped back, “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s face twisted, and she let go of Keg, pulling herself away like it was costing her physical effort.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck </span>
  </em>
  <span>could you not have known?” she demanded, straightening up. “How the- You worked with these people, right? Lived with them? What, did- did no-one else ever fucking fight back before-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t-” Keg rubbed at her neck. “Look, I used to run with them, but I wasn’t...wasn’t high up or anything. They had me guarding their fucking hideout, watching the cages, “not on slaving runs. Still shitty, I know, but…point is, I hadn’t seen them in action before! Not against anyone who knew what they were doing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s telling the truth,” Nott spoke up, and if she’d sounded furious before, now she was just...drained. Exhausted. “Caleb- Caleb put a spell on her, remember? To- to make her tell the truth. He’d have known if it didn’t work-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are going to Shadycreek,” Keg said over her. “They’re probably going to take them to the Sour Nest, that’s where they-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re going north,” Molly interrupted. “Pretty fast, too. And on the main road. They’re not going to be able to keep this pace up for long.” Not with one broken cart and exhausted, panicked horses. It was a wonder they’d got away at all. They weren’t unbeatable. The Nein had bloodied their noses, even if they’d broken both their metaphorical arms doing it. And now they were going to have to get the others back without Caleb, when it was four against seven on the road and four against gods-knew-how-many at this Sour Nest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We fuckin’ knew they were going north!” Beau muttered, “Can that- Okay. You know they’re on the main road?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly held up the hand with the ring on it. “I know that’s where Caleb is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg was staring at him now, but Molly barely noticed her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau gave a jerkily little nod. “...magic rings bullshit?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Magic rings bullshit,” Molly agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay - so, this Sour Nest place, what is it?” Beau demanded, rounding on Keg. “Are we talking like a camp, or some kinda fortress, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg grimaced. “It’s...a sort of small fort? I don’t know the proper word for it. Like a mansion, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>fortified</span>
  </em>
  <span>? They took it over a couple years back, been there ever since.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And whereabouts is it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg paused. “...’bout two hours out from Shadycreek, but that’s…” she raked a hand through her greasy hair. “This is pointless.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Nott demanded, glaring through her tears. “What’s pointless?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Keg drew in a long, pained, shuddering breath. “They’re even more powerful than I remember. I didn’t even fucking know that Lorenzo could do that! You saw what he did, there’s no way. It’s fucked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.” It took Molly a moment to realise he’d said that out loud, and then there was nothing to do but brazen it out. “No, that’s not- That’s not the deal here. We’re going to find our friends, get them back, and then we’re going to burn the Sour Nest to the ground and dance in the ashes.” He paused. “...metaphorically, anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was, after all, the only one of them who might be able to pull that off, and he had...issues...around burning people that Molly didn’t know extended to burning buildings, but which might well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You- You can back out if you want to,” he went on, glaring at Keg. “But we’re going.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We are!” Nott agreed at once, “I don’t...don’t know how, exactly, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s face twisted. “Molly- What if she’s right?” She swallowed, turning to Keg. “How long have you been separated from these fucking assholes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took Keg a moment to answer. “...maybe a month, I- I don’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They learned to do that in a month?” Nott asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly narrowed his eyes. “You said you didn’t see them in action before?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not...I mean, occasionally someone would...look, it’s Shadycreek Run, all right? It’s not a great place. Sometimes fights happen. Mostly people wouldn’t fuck with the Shepherds, but sometimes people got desperate, or thought they were strong enough to be a threat to them, and...they weren’t. Shit happened. I'm clearly not very </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking </span>
  </em>
  <span>bright, so there's a lot I probably didn't pick up on, but- They-” She broke off, shaking her head. “I don't know. I'm realizing I don't- I don’t fucking know anything about them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You said they had you watching their hideout, right?” Molly cut in. “So...assuming you know about that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I- Yeah, a bit. I don’t know. There were...I thought there were just five! I don't know who those other two were. I don't fucking know! Everything that I thought I knew about them- I don't know.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You said they hired you on for extra muscle, though?” Molly prodded. “So, this is something they do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, but…” Keg shrugged. “Look, I- They don’t normally bring people in on the actual slaving runs, that’s...it was only ever those five for that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So they hire extra people to guard the hideout?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>obviously</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I told you, that’s what I did-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How many people? On average, I mean. Just...roughly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg blew out an explosive breath. “I dunno. Two or three, maybe. It’s not...they’re not afraid anyone’ll take it from them. They’re...they’ve got powerful backers. I don’t...don’t know who, exactly, but...whoever it is, they’re a big deal in the Run. Nobody’s gonna want to mess with them. Just...just random guards, y’know? I stayed on longer than most, but most of the time they don’t stick around long enough for it to be worth learning their names. I think Lorenzo might’ve sold a couple of them, the ones that pissed him off, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, so not people with much...much of an attachment to the Shepherds. Maybe willing to cut and run if we push them far enough?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg barked out a harsh and mirthless laugh. “Yeah- Yeah, no. No. You don’t understand, Lorenzo is...if they have any sense, they’ll be more scared of him than of anything you guys can throw at them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau paced away, fury visible in every tight, tense line of her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- We can’t just give up!” Nott said shrilly. “We can’t- They’ve got the others, we need- We can’t just leave him- can’t leave them, I mean.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“We’re not going to,” Molly promised recklessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Too fucking right we’re not!” Beau snapped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shook her head, and her voice, when she spoke again, held an edge of tears and desperation. “Cut your losses.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly didn’t even know which of them had spoken - or maybe it had been all three of them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg raised her hands. Her eyes were a little over-bright. “Look, you can’t...you saw what those fuckers could do. Can you fight them? ‘Cause you made it sound like they got your toughest guys, and now...you don’t even have a spell-slinger to make up the difference…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you, no!” Beau spat. “We- Okay. So we can’t fight them. Not without help, anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly nodded. “So we find help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wasn’t sure how or where, exactly, but they could figure that out on the way. Probably there were at least a few people in Shadycreek Run who didn’t like the Shepherds either and might want to join in taking them down, if there was someone bright and flashy and colourful standing in front of them and drawing all the fire.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We find help,” Beau agreed, with a jerky little answering nod. “And then we kill these assholes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good plan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, came up with it myself.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But where, though?” Nott butted in. “I mean...Keg, you...you know this place, is there anyone…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg grimaced. “Here’s the thing about Shadycreek Run: it is a lawless town. And if you guys have got coin, then people will fight for you. There isn’t a lot of honour there, but there are people that are willing to fight if they're incentivized. So there might be people we can gather, at least get intel, there might be ways of breaking them out, I don't know. But there are people there that hate the Iron Shepherds, and there’re a lot of fucking people who’re scared of them. But- It is a long shot. Not saying there aren’t a lot of people in the Run who’d love to see the Shepherds taken down. But they’re not...anyone strong enough to do it would’ve already done it. Even the fucking Taskers don’t bother them, and those fucking nerds’ll pick a fight with pretty much anyone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She and Molly clearly had a very different definition of ‘fucking nerds’.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speaking as someone who’s met a lot of angry mobs,” he said instead, “They don’t...actually need to be all that strong, individually.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg grimaced. “That’s not...look, I told you, place is a fucking fortress. You send a mob up to those gates, they’ll just...fucking mow them down with arrows from inside. Maybe magic, too, since Lorenzo’s...apparently fucking had that all this time too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott, though, was thinking on another track. “Keg,” she said awkwardly. “No...no judgement or anything, but you sort of...froze up in the, the little fight we had…”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Yeah,” Keg muttered, avoiding all their eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And- You keep saying we should cut our losses. Does that...are you coming? Because...we don’t actually need you. I mean...if Molly can- can track Caleb, and they don’t know about it…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’ll find out.” Keg swallowed. “We- If they find out, they’ll probably just...kill him, dump the body. Or use him to lure you all into a trap.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly didn’t know if the rings would still work if Caleb were dead. If he’d still be able to feel the absence of Caleb in his mind like a phantom limb. He could feel Caleb’s presence now, at the other end of the bond, in the distant, dull way of an unconsciousness without dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was so pale that the green of her skin looked sickly. “So- How do we know you won’t freeze up again?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or cut and run, like you said?” Beau added, watching Keg with hard eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg was very still for a moment. “I...I had a friend, before. I told you about that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...yeah,” Beau said, folding her arms, so thoroughly unimpressed that even Molly felt himself wither a little under the force of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well...I wasn’t bullshitting you about that. I...he was great. He was...I only had one friend, but when push comes to shove...you only really need one. They killed him.” She drew in a hard breath, shaky effort. “And I ran then too. I left him behind, he’s the reason I’m here. I di- Ah- I didn’t think I would do it again, but I did, I fucking froze up. So I- I can’t promise it, but I promise that I will- I’ll try. My life isn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It’s never been. It's kind of the shit about meeting people that are actually kind is that you realize what a fucking nightmare your life’s been before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly...had no real idea what to say to that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d been alone, and then there had been Gustav, and the carnival. He’d never...they hadn’t all been nice, but most of them had been kind. He’d never known a life </span>
  <em>
    <span>without </span>
  </em>
  <span>kindness in it. Didn’t want to imagine one. And, sure, it meant he had something to compare it to when villagers ran them out of town or threw rocks or had to be sweet-talked into letting him into a tavern at all because of the way he looked, but that was only ever half the story.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau, though, was nodding. “Yeah. And I bet it pissed you right the hell off at first, didn’t it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg made a noise that might have been second-cousin to a sniffle, hastily silenced. “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. People like that, assholes like us...tends to have that effect.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m touched,” Molly said irreverently, because this- It felt, suddenly, all too close to a eulogy, and Caleb wasn’t dead. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>wasn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Molly could feel him, getting farther away with any second they lingered here. At least he was still alive. At least they were all still alive - the one upside of it being slavers was that they were all too valuable to kill out of hand.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau snorted, a weak, wet thing. “Fuck you, Molly,” she snapped back, with no particular heat behind it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So...we’re going, then?” Molly prodded. “How far out are we from Shadycreek?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shrugged. “Couple days, maybe? I’ve never...This is the first time I’ve been away from the Run, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can we sneak in? I mean….we’re not all all that stealthy, but it’s better odds than just...going and storming the castle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That is...slightly less of a suicide mission, but...you’re going to want actual fighters. Just- You try to whip up a mob in Shadycreek, you’re asking a lot of people to die, and some of them - maybe even most of them - won’t deserve it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So we’re sneaking in,” Nott said firmly, straightening up a little. “We can do that - well, I can do that, and apparently Keg can do that - I don’t know about you two.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg huffed out a breath. “Look, I told you, I don't think it's unreasonable to say it's a suicide mission, but if you want to do it, if you want to go after them, they don't run the town. There are people that could be swayed. But you're gonna need money.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They were carrying more money than the entire carnival had made in a month, but...the carnival had not, generally speaking, expected to be paid to risk their lives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “Okay, let’s...we should get moving, the longer we hang around here, the further ahead of us they’re gonna get and the longer they’re going to have at this Sour Nest place before we get there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know if it was possible to torture someone while on the road. To </span>
  <em>
    <span>break </span>
  </em>
  <span>them, as Keg kept putting it. Molly wasn’t- He’d never actually had to think about torture before, not in any detail. He’d honestly rather he never had to think about it again, either, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Vague images kept flickering in the back of his brain. Restraints, the gleam of light off a knife, a face twisted in pain. Just vague suggestions, filling in the blanks of Desmond’s stories, almost all of which tended to feature at least one period of captivity, with or without bonus torture from which the hero would need to be rescued and tenderly nursed back to health. It wasn’t that he’d had any illusions about how likely it would be for them all to get killed, in this kind of life. He’d just expected it to be...well. Getting killed. Quick and sudden and terrible, but...over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And what had been an interesting interlude in a story was something else entirely, when you replaced Desmond’s faceless heroes with Yasha, with Jester, with Fjord...with Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s stomach turned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m gonna go...check on the horses,” he managed, “See how many we still have - I think a couple might’ve bolted during the fight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As it turned out, they hadn’t. In fact…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly squinted at the makeshift hitching post.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...did we have four horses before?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was pretty sure they hadn’t had four horses before. There was a reason they’d been doubling up. And the new horse didn’t have any of the tack that would suggest it had been one of the Shepherds’ horses that had bolted somewhere in the chaos. Even if it had been, wouldn’t it have just </span>
  <em>
    <span>bolted</span>
  </em>
  <span>, rather than sticking around this close to the source of all that noise and trouble?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t wearing any tack at all, actually. Was it wild? It was pretty big for a wild mustang, but Molly wasn’t exactly an expert on horses - looking after the circus’s pack animals had been one of his jobs, but generally that just meant feeding and mucking out, and for anything more involved, Bo had apparently had some sort of training as a horse-leech before he’d joined the circus.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...on the other hand, free horse. They could have one each now, instead of doubling up, even if they’d have to shorten the stirrups a lot on one of these horses if Nott was going to have any hope of staying in the saddle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Where did you come from?” he muttered, reaching out to pat the horse’s neck, and wondering if they had any rope or similar they could use to make a halter or makeshift bridle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The horse nickered and Molly took his hand away sharpish as the lines of it began to shift, the muscles shifting under its skin as it reared up onto its hind legs, its long face shifting and shortening until, all at once, there was a firbolg standing there where the horse had been, towering placidly over him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a few seconds to put it together, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you wouldn’t happen to be called Nila, would you?” Molly asked, squinting up at her. Yes, that did look like the same sort of feathered token around her neck that Jamba had had, back in the woods further south, the same sort of richly-coloured, very simple clothing - they must have a hell of a set of recipes for dyes in that village, Molly almost wished he could go back and ask. “Because, if you are, we’ve sort of promised to bring your body back for burial, but that...doesn’t look like it’ll be necessary.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The firbolg - possibly Nila, but Molly didn’t know. God, he hoped this was Nila, it would be really awkward after everything they’d all said to Nott about assuming any firbolg they met was going to know Pumat Sol - blinked her great, round brown eyes at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...I am Nila, yes,” she said after a moment. “You have spoken with the rest of my clan?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “A couple of them, anyway. A woman named Jumnda? And a kid, Ombo. They seemed pretty worried about you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A shadow seemed to pass over Nila’s face. “What did Jumnda say?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not much,” Molly admitted. “Just that your son had been taken, and you’d gone to try and get him back. That’s what we’re trying too, by the way,” he added. “And...we could do with some assistance, since we’re all after the same thing…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila looked down, away from Molly. “Not just my son. My partner, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly did not reach over to toy with the ring on his finger, but it was a near thing. “Seems to be a lot of that going around right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila’s ears drooped a little further. “I saw. I am sorry for your loss.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You </span>
  <em>
    <span>saw-</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Molly repeated, and maybe Nila heard the accusation in it, because her ears went back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have been watching you,” she said, and then, answering the question Molly hadn’t meant to ask. “I didn’t know if I could trust you, before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You might’ve asked,” Molly pointed out, and it cost visible effort, this time, to keep his voice light and friendly. She’d been there. And, all right, he didn’t know that she’d have been any help, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But would one more person have made the difference? Was that all it would take? Just one person, one more spell - she was a caster, right? She had to be, horses didn’t just turn into people at random, one more caster might’ve evened the odds - and Caleb might still be here with them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila met his eyes squarely. “And you might have lied.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly opened his mouth to snap back that, since they’d been fighting people she had reason to want dead anyway, there wasn’t exactly much reason to hold back...and stopped himself. Yelling wasn’t going to solve anything. He knew that, most of the time. He’d never really considered himself to be much of a yeller. Well, not unless he was making someone bleed out the ears, anyway. And it never persuaded anyone of anything except that he was dangerous and possibly cursed and should be run out of town on a rail. They needed another caster. Conveniently, one had come along. And it wasn’t as though they’d been expecting her to come in on their side in a fight that didn’t really have all that much to do with her to start off with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Molly!” Beau yelled from down the slope. “What’s the holdup?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Company!” Molly called back, and then, because he couldn’t quite resist it. “That means be polite, if you can manage it!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Fuck you!” Beau shouted, somewhere down the slope, but he thought she sounded at least a little bit relieved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She looked it, too, as she came into view, her pack already on her shoulder and Keg and Nott hurrying their steps to keep pace with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...the fuck is this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly waved at Nila. “This is Nila. She was a horse, and then she wasn’t. Seems like that could be useful.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Of course, they couldn’t leave it at that. Beau gaped, first at Molly and then at Nila, and then, all at once, she seemed to collect herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Holy shit,” Molly heard Keg mutter, apparently just to herself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Um...hi?” Nott squeaked, her eyes flickering from Molly to Beau to Nila.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila smiled. It was, objectively, quite a nice smile, as these things went. She was another of those people who should not have been able to pull off ‘cute’, but did. Like Nott, or Jester, or-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Anyway, it was a very welcoming expression indeed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hello.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a breathless shriek.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You all right?” Keg asked. Molly really was off his game, it took him a second to realise she was talking to him, not Nott. In his defence, </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>wasn’t the one who’d just made a noise like an unhappy teakettle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’ve been better,” he admitted, after an awkward moment. “I’ll </span>
  <em>
    <span>be </span>
  </em>
  <span>better once we’re on the road again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Beau was still eyeing Nila warily. “So...we ran into a tribe on the way here. You wouldn't happen to know an older woman named Jumnda, would you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She is my elder. I told your friend-” Nila cast a look at Molly, who realised, all at once, that he hadn’t introduced himself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he said, with a poor attempt at his usual panache. “Molly, to my friends, and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>hope we’ll be friends. You seem like a good friend to have.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila actually blushed a little. “I do try to be,” she said earnestly. “I am trying to be, now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly hurried on. “The obnoxious one is Beau-” he could feel her glare boring into the back of his head, and cheerfully ignored it. “The small one with the crossbow is Nott, and the one in the armour is Keg.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila gave a little nod. “And...your partner? The one that was taken.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly swallowed.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Caleb,” Nott spoke up. “His name was Caleb. He- he was our leader.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another nod. “It is nice to meet you all.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s nice to meet you too,” Nott replied, a little less cautious, with Beau echoing her a second later. Molly half-wanted to tease her about finally finding her manners, but...no. His heart wasn’t in it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott paused. “...so, you know Jumnda. Do you know Pumat Sol?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau groaned. “Nott, we’ve been through this, not all firbolgs know each other-” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t- You don’t go around expecting me to know every other tiefling,” Molly added - </span>
  <em>
    <span>why </span>
  </em>
  <span>did his life keep forcing him to take sides with Beau?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>now</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Nott pointed out. “You don’t know anything, you keep saying so, you don’t remember. You probably </span>
  <em>
    <span>used </span>
  </em>
  <span>to, but then you got killed or whatever and you came back not knowing-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“See, I don’t know anything about the asshole who had this body before me, except that he apparently had a thing for books and...weird fucking magic rituals...and even I know that’s got to be bullshit.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What did Jumnda say?” Nila cut in, before Nott could reply, having watched the byplay with the faint, confused look that was the ordinary response to being around the Nein for more than ten minutes at a time. Molly liked that look, most of the time - people used to get the same way figuring out some of the better acts at the carnival.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She said a...uh...strong woman on a mission to go find her son, part of her clan, was heading north.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Also to bring back your body for burial, if we found you dead,” Molly said helpfully. Beau glared at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We met your...er- er- friends?” Nott hazarded. “Fam- Family? Tribe? Clan?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Nila gave another of those gentle little smiles, and another nod. “All of those work.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you’ve been...they told us that you’re trying to find the- the same people we are, I- I think? You’re- You’re trying to find these folks who kidnapped someone who- who you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a moment for Nila to reply.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t sure if I could...if I could trust you,” she admitted. “But seeing as…how I saw what you went through...I could use a little help too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly...should be over that. He really should. She was under no obligation to help them, it wasn’t like they just went ploughing into other people’s fights, even against people they </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>were assholes, just on the off chance it would help them. There was no reason to feel aggrieved that Nila hadn’t. He was being ridiculous. And not in the fun way, which involved alcohol and face-paint and waking up with no pants and flowers in your hair.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, we’d be...grateful for the assistance,” he said carefully. “You saw, but our last attempt was...didn’t...didn’t exactly go well for us.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He reached, again, for the part of his mind that touched Caleb’s. He was unconscious, still - and no wonder, with how much blood he’d been losing by the end. Molly had shed enough of it in two years to know what it looked like when a man hardly had enough left in his veins to keep going - but Molly could feel him starting to stir now, the faint, fuzzy edge of Caleb’s confusion and mounting unease, undercut with a sharper edge of...yes, dread.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think I might have some abilities that can help,” Nila offered. “But I knew I could not do it alone, and I saw you have abilities too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau grimaced. “On our good days,” she conceded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What abilities are you talking about?” Keg cut in, eyeing Nila thoughtfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She was a horse,” Molly pointed out helpfully. “I did mention that. I saw it. Definitely a horse. Can you do other...other animals? Maybe something a bit bigger and more dangerous? A dragon, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Caleb could turn his cat into a bird?” Nott put in, “That’s him - the cat, I mean, not Caleb - on Molly’s shoulder.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I cannot become a dragon,” Nila replied, which was a disappointment right there, even if Molly wasn’t exactly sure how they were supposed to get a dragon into this Sour Nest place anyway. Carefully, he supposed. Nila went on: “I think the most dangerous I can be is a crocodile.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s pretty dangerous,” Beau agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We fought those,” Nott said over...whatever it was Keg had to say on the subject, it was kind of hard to hear her over Nott, “One almost killed me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg blinked at her. “Not the same crocodile, though, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott’s eyes went saucer-wide. “Was it you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean...we ended up killing it to find out if it had eaten Kiri’s family and then trying to sell the skin,” Molly felt obliged to point out. “So, if it </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>her, she’s got a lot more reasons to be mad at us than we have against her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It wasn’t me,” Nila added quickly. “I never- I never leave. This is the first time I’ve left my family.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ever been in a fight?” Beau asked, narrowing her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila paused. “...not really.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That...wasn’t exactly promising, as much as Molly liked the idea of seeing Lorenzo getting eaten by a fucking crocodile, and the rest of his troupe with him. Nearby, he heard Keg groan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I- But I have other abilities that I might be able to use to help! There’s one in particular that I want to use against these- </span>
  <em>
    <span>evil </span>
  </em>
  <span>people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause, and then Nott said awkwardly: </span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“You can curse in front of us, if you need to. I mean-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila’s forehead creased as she leaned in. “What is this ‘cursing’?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, god-” Keg muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott looked, for a moment, slightly confused. “I think you’ll pick it up if you hang around us for more than an afternoon.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think it’ll take a whole afternoon?” Molly asked, raising his eyebrows. “We’d only had Kiri about ten minutes before she picked it up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did whatever language Nila’s clan spoke among themselves have cursing, the same way Common did? Infernal didn’t - at least, not any Molly had ever found, and he’d woken up with the knowledge of it still in his head, when he’d forgotten everything else about whoever the hell Lucien had been. It made his life a lot harder coming up with things to yell at enemies to make their ears bleed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott shrugged. “Well, yeah, but that’s with kids. They’ll pick up </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything</span>
  </em>
  <span>, especially if it’s something you don’t want them to say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They do do that,” Nila agreed. “Especially if it’s in front of someone you want to be pleased with you. Anyway, I have some abilities that I’d like to use on these bad people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Killing abilities?” Keg asked, looking wary.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you...willing to kill?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you say the word ‘fuck’ for me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a long, thoughtful pause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not know what it means, but ‘fuck’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What’s the single most offensive thing it is possible to call someone in your language?” Molly put in, just because it seemed like a useful word to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila put her head on one side. “...I don’t know if it translates very well. But...do you know what it is, when a person turns on their own clan? Or...their family, I suppose, in outsiders’ terms?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Traitor,” Beau supplied. “I get that. Or- Actually, that one’s a bit broad…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“As ‘worst possible things to call someone’ go, it’s not bad,” Molly agreed. Definitely better than Common, where if you wanted to insult someone, for some reason you yelled about all the sex they were having, which had never really made much sense to Molly, even if most of the words were still pretty satisfying to use.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you have things you just...call someone you’re pissed o- really mad at but don’t actually mean?” Beau asked, squinting a little at Nila.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila paused. “...we do,” she allowed. “Is that what ‘fuck’ is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It...can be?” Beau offered, faintly confused now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila nodded. “I will remember that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, what a fascinating set of cultural misunderstandings was going to happen the next time Nila and her clan had to deal with outsiders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As it turned out, what Nila meant by ‘abilities’ was that she could and would shove a lightning-bolt up Lorenzo’s arse at the first possible opportunity, and Molly, for one, was all in favour, provided he got to stab the bastard a couple of times first.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There didn’t seem to be much point in wasting any more daylight, and five was undoubtedly better than four, so it didn’t take long for them to get underway, Nott riding with Beau on the same horse that she had shared with Caleb and Nila trotting along with them, horse-shaped once again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d gone maybe eight miles, alternately trotting and walking, the better to conserve their horses’ strength - they’d pushed the beasts almost to their limit yesterday, and couldn’t do it again today without killing them - when they found the bodies, dumped like rubbish in the middle of the road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were three of them. Two humans, man and woman, and a half-elven man, their bodies swollen with water as if they’d drowned, mottled purple from the cold. Frozen to death, Molly thought, remembering that Cone of Cold. Casualties from the battle. Had- Had </span>
  <em>
    <span>they </span>
  </em>
  <span>done this?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If they’d waited, or attacked at night instead of on the road...these people might be alive now. Might even be free, if they’d gone in by stealth instead of looking for a fight, if they’d thought about it for a second and not just assumed they knew everything they needed to already.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t a comfortable thought. And it wasn’t- It hadn’t been their fault these people were taken, it wasn’t their fault that Lorenzo was enough of a ruthless bastard to count a cart full of slaves as collateral damage in trying to kill them, and they’d fought because they wanted to free...their own friends, sure, but these people too, if they could manage it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did that change anything, if they’d got them killed anyway?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They didn’t have time to bury the bodies, but they could get them off the road at least, not just leave them there for passing carts to render them down to pulp. It was grim work. Funny, but Molly had never handled a body before. Not- Not one he wasn’t looting, anyway. Even Kylre...well, he’d been preoccupied, then, with Toya, and he hadn’t been the one to deal with the body. There wasn’t any point in regretting that, so he didn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb was still moving, some way ahead of them. Not at Shadycreek Run yet, not if they were still two days away on horseback and the Shepherds still had three carts to worry about, one of them pretty seriously busted up, but moving steadily, and that sharp edge of dread had only grown sharper as he came to consciousness and realised where he was, and what must have happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>We’re coming,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Molly promised him as they rode, even knowing that Caleb could not hear. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hold out, we’re coming for you. For all of you. Tell Yasha-</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But, of course, even if Caleb could’ve heard, he wouldn’t have been able to risk passing on a message. Not with the Shepherds there, listening, and the chance that they’d cut his throat and dump the body the moment they realised that they could track him to find the Shepherds. Molly tried not to imagine finding Caleb’s body like this, thrown carelessly off the back of a cart to lie, sprawled and broken, in the middle of the Glory Run Road.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t work. In his mind’s eye, Caleb’s body became Yasha’s, her mismatched eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky, never to see another storm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was almost a relief when they broke off from the road, as it curved back west and they kept on northward, across open scrub and grassland rendered into a plane of flat white nothing with the recent snowfall. There weren’t as many farms and fields up this way, even compared with the rocky barrens around Hupperdook, and Molly couldn’t help but wonder what it was the people of Shadycreek Run </span>
  <em>
    <span>ate</span>
  </em>
  <span>, exactly? You couldn’t feed a whole city off thievery - couldn’t even feed a whole carnival that way - and it didn’t look like there was much farming going on up here. Reason being, probably, that if Shadycreek Run really was everything Keg said it was, anyone trying to farm up here had probably up and sold out after the third or fourth time they got raided. Molly couldn’t blame them, assuming these hypothetical farmers had ever tried to make a go of it at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They managed to reach a hillier bit before nightfall, with a bit of an outcropping to keep the worst of the wind off, even if everything was too soaked for them to even try and light a fire. Which meant another night cuddled up together in a pile, for warmth and because there wasn’t really room for anything else, or even really to set up the tent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of them got very much sleep, that night. Molly was still lying awake with some kind of tree root - how was there a </span>
  <em>
    <span>root </span>
  </em>
  <span>there when Molly hadn’t seen a tree for miles around? - poking into his back when his turn came up for the watch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For some reason, Nott had decided to take it with him, instead of pairing off with one of the people without night-sight who </span>
  <em>
    <span>weren’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>inadvertently responsible for their favourite wizard being abducted by slavers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The snow was coming down heavier now - they’d be lucky if they weren’t buried by morning. Molly didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. The Iron Shepherds might have more trouble moving in this, with their carts and their captives. That might mean less time for them to break their prisoners between getting back to the Sour Nest and...whatever it was the Nein were going to do to rescue them. Molly still wasn’t all that clear on that part of the plan.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was difficult to do a watch while still cuddled into the larger pile under the overhang, but somehow they managed it, Nott sitting hunched over at the edge of the group, staring unblinkingly into the dark, as if that might somehow conjure Caleb out of the dark to join them again. Maybe even Yash and Fjord and Jester as well - it was hard to miss how much Nott liked Jester.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He nearly jumped out of his skin when Nott spoke.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Molly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?” he managed, and even to his own ears he sounded foolish. Well, that was nothing new, at least. Always ready to make a damn fool of himself, and all that, except that usually people could at least be tricked into believing he was doing it on purpose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can...can feel him, can’t you? With your…” she wriggled her fingers. “Weird...ring connection?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Just now, he almost wished he couldn’t. There was a persistent phantom ache in his wrists and his shoulders, or- No, not an </span>
  <em>
    <span>ache</span>
  </em>
  <span>, exactly, but the feeling that there should be one. Worse than that was the slow, dull feeling that had been creeping up on him all day. He couldn't quite name it, except that it was...that it felt like it might be a distant second-cousin to the way Caleb felt during one of his episodes, as if the world was somehow very far away, and he stood outside himself, seeing his own face from the outside. Even as a pale shadow of itself through the bond, that feeling unsettled him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They don’t...I’d know if they’d hurt him,” he offered, hating how pathetic and awkward it sounded. He could swear he used to be better at putting up a front than this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished he knew that about Yasha. Yash was strong, he reminded herself. She’d survived everything the world had thrown at her before this. She could survive just about anything, he thought, if she had to. Gods, he wished she didn’t have to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott did not look reassured. “So...have they?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They must be waiting ‘till they don’t have to worry about another ambush,” Nott muttered, more to herself than Molly. “They never- My old clan never tortured prisoners on the move, not when there might be a- a Crownsguard patrol nearby, or anything like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I figured maybe they couldn’t do it in the back of a moving cart,” Molly admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott paused. “...I suppose it- it depends on how much they care about him making it out alive. There’s lots of...I didn’t get all of it, you know, when I was...when I was still with the clan, but lots of arteries and things. It’s very easy to hit one by accident even if you’re not being bumped and jolted all the time…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The worst thing was that Molly could actually picture it pretty easily, now. The knife, and the way they might use it. One slip and that would be it. They don’t want him to die, he reminded himself. Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever. If they meant to sell him too...it was a chance, at least. A slim one. And these were slavers. They’d want to make a profit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t want to have to ask Keg how long the ‘breaking’ took. Even one day of it would be too many.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh.” He stared out into the dark. They weren’t close enough behind the Iron Shepherds now to see a fire, even if they’d lit one. Still, Molly could feel them. They must be using some kind of magic to speed their journey, or the Nein would have caught up to them by now. As it was, it seemed like they would both reach Shadycreek Run tomorrow, and Molly didn’t know what they were going to find when they got there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Molly?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He made a vaguely affirmative sort of noise, not really listening.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m...I’m sorry. About...you know. It wasn’t- I mean, it was- It happened because of you, but it’s not…” Nott looked away into the dark. “Caleb said, when we first found out about the rings, that you couldn’t- That he had to </span>
  <em>
    <span>choose </span>
  </em>
  <span>to- to, you know, be injured instead of you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly blinked. “...you knew he could do that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...well, yeah.” Nott paused. “He- He did that spell again on the rings, after...everything. So we knew what to expect. He just...didn’t tell everyone everything.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He might have told me</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Molly caught himself thinking. But- Well, it wasn’t as though Molly had ever been planning to use that little trick. If he </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>use it - probably he could. If he couldn’t, it’d be the first thing the rings could do that didn’t go both ways.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished he could ask why Caleb had done it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished he could be sure that all of them were unharmed, not just Caleb. Yash might’ve fought - probably </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>fought - and Jester and Fjord were...someone had to have healed Caleb. Had that been Jester? Had they got her out of her chains to do it? Or did they have a cleric or something in the Shepherds now that Keg hadn’t known about?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott didn’t say anything else, and for once Molly didn’t feel up for it either, his head full of what might be waiting for them, up ahead and further north, where he could feel Caleb’s presence like a point of flame.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Morning was worse - Molly could hardly move without something flaring up, all his old scars aching in the cold. He didn’t even remember </span>
  <em>
    <span>getting </span>
  </em>
  <span>most of them, this was just unfair. Fucking Lucien. How had he lived up here, if it felt like this to get up every morning? Had he just been a masochist? Molly hoped not, it felt...uneasy...to think of that arsehole ever having anything that resembled </span>
  <em>
    <span>fun</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Under other circumstances, Molly might’ve been happy or even excited by the next day’s journey. There were </span>
  <em>
    <span>mountains </span>
  </em>
  <span>again, great craggy looming things that splintered off to form a deep ravine, bare and rocky and bleakly beautiful. If they’d all been travelling together, probably Molly would’ve nearly fallen out of the cart again trying to take it all in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, there was no cart to lean out of, and without anyone to share it with, the landscape seemed...no less beautiful, snow-dusted and glittering with frost and so utterly indifferent to whether a few little people lived or died somewhere in the vastness of it all that it took Molly’s breath away. But where, before, that had been exhilarating, now, all Molly could feel was helpless in the face of that enormity.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, of course, there were the Crownsguard. Not that Molly had ever thought all that highly of them in general, but really? An entire outpost of Crownsguard there to hassle passing travellers, and not one of them noticed the entire convoy of slavers that just rolled through?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or rather, every single one of them had turned a blind eye. It wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>surprising</span>
  </em>
  <span> - in Molly’s experience, the long arm of the law generally had its palm up, and you’d better grease it if you wanted them to do anything </span>
  <em>
    <span>for </span>
  </em>
  <span>you instead of </span>
  <em>
    <span>to </span>
  </em>
  <span>you - but it made it a lot harder, this time, to grit his teeth and smile and try to work out a bribe to get by and get a bit of information about the people who’d gone through right before them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Crownsguard either couldn’t or wouldn’t tell them anything they hadn’t already known - three carts, a rough description of the people guarding them, and enough vagueness around what the carts were holding that Molly thought they had known not to look too closely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was very, </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>hard not to fantasise getting his swords out, for that part of the conversation, and Molly didn’t normally think of himself as being that easy to rile up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, once they were in the ravine, it turned out to be something like a maze, all narrow, twisting clefts and chasms in the rock, twisting on themselves so that it felt like they were going backwards as often as forwards, with no guide but the feeling of Caleb, sometimes behind and sometimes ahead of them, and getting more distant with every passing second, and no other way to go most of the time than straight ahead. It was narrow enough, some times, that they had to ride single-file, and in other places wide enough that they could ride five abreast.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg had taken the lead through, as she was the only one of them who knew how to get to Shadycreek Run, and Beau was directly behind her, with Nott and Nila in the middle and Molly taking the rear, just in case anyone </span>
  <em>
    <span>else </span>
  </em>
  <span>felt like sneaking up on them and taking a few captives.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They’d been picking their way through the tunnels - could you call them tunnels, when they were open to the sky? They </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt </span>
  </em>
  <span>like tunnels, at least - for almost three hours when Keg called a halt and told them they’d reached the gate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So that’s just literally around this corner?” Nott asked, peering around the head of Beau’s horse, even though they weren’t anything like far enough ahead to see.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just right away,” Keg agreed, gesturing. “If we went even just a few feet that way-” she whistled. “Guards, big old gate, it would’ve been- Oh, man.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Molly grimaced. “So, what’s the plan here? I mean, Nott can disguise herself, and Nila can just be a horse, but for the rest of us…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg paused, looked him over. “...you got anything a little less...attention-grabbing? A nice plain cloak, maybe?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. He had a black cloak, he thought, somewhere - the choice had been black, grey or brown, and black had been, for once, the least boring option available to him - but he’d have to do a bit of rummaging to get at it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...they’re not going to want to get a look at my face? If they’re doing this to find out who’s coming through...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg paused. “...yeah, okay, probably,” she admitted. “Between the coat and the…” she made a vague gesture taking in Molly’s tattoos, his jewellery, really everything about him, because you didn’t see purple tieflings on </span>
  <em>
    <span>every </span>
  </em>
  <span>street corner. “You’re kinda distinctive.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly sighed, and got out the scarf he used to keep his jewellery in at nights, when they had the leisure for him to do it. Every ornament he took out felt like it unmoored him, a little, from himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought Nila was going to use some kinda...weird...</span>
  <em>
    <span>horse</span>
  </em>
  <span> magic to make us invisible?” Beau butted in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can,” Nila agreed. “You would be invisible to others. To people.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can do that to both of us?” Beau asked, squinting. “‘Cause I can’t disguise myself that well either.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can. I can...make you more easily overlooked. Or more easily taken for something...other than you are.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So,” Molly put in, fastidiously removing the brass caps from his horns, “If we were to stretch her out on a horse and cover her in baggage…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau glowered at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila didn’t seem to notice. “Their eyes will pass over her. It will be as if she is part of the- of the pack on the horse.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. “...I can’t choose a joke to make about that,” he said after a moment, almost disappointed in himself. “Sort of spoiled for choice.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yash would have smiled at that, even if she for some reason actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>liked </span>
  </em>
  <span>Beau- And, all right, Molly could see </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This wasn’t the time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you, Molly,” Beau snapped back, before looking back to Nila. “So, you can do it now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if you put it on me and I just rode normally?” Molly asked. He’d gone to all the trouble of taking his jewellery out, after all, and he didn’t do that for just anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila paused. “...you would be harder to notice,” she allowed. “But they would see you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’ll take it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait- What, no, he’s more obvious than I am!” Beau protested, sitting bolt upright. “If </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>can get away with just a fucking cloak-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “People see a purple tiefling, they don’t generally give much more of a description than ‘purple tiefling’,” he said breezily. “Sometimes they mention the coat or the tattoos, but even that doesn’t happen that often.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that there were many of them out there, but in a whole region, there was probably at least one. And that was even assuming that they’d demand he put the hood down.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And these fuckers know there’s one after them! You don’t think they’re gonna want to know about that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. “...who’s running this gate?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“The Utelochs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That the family backing the Iron Shepherds?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg paused. “...no,” she admitted. “They’re not. Don’t have any serious issues with them, though. They’d make them pay for information. Through the nose, probably. None of the Tribes get along </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>well.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “They’ll be looking for all of us as a group. If there aren’t even the same number of us coming in, and half of us are going to be disguised, I’d say we’re safe enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay, so why am I the one stuck playing luggage?” Beau demanded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “It </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>your idea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The gate through to Shadycreek Run was built across one of the wider points, wide enough that they’d had to build an actual wall across it, not just a gate, with heads, stripped down to skulls by the crows and the cold winds, spiked on posts just to make it that little bit more unwelcoming.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were only three gate guards - a couple of burly human men and a half-orc woman taller and burlier than both of them put together. So, naturally, she was the one that came over as they approached the gate, a broadsword longer than Beau was tall slung casually over her shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, you! Where you headed today!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Shady- Shadycreek Run,” Nott squeaked out, which went surprisingly well with Rissa Tinkertop’s face, which Nott had co-opted for the occasion. Molly tried to twitch the hood of his cloak a little further over his face, and hoped against hope that nobody looked at his hands on the reins.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman grunted. “Well, you pass through the Breach, you pay the toll.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“All right,” Nott managed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman’s eyes flicked to Molly, hanging back a little behind Nott, and lingered. Molly sat stock-still. The trick was not to shrink into himself. Not to look as if he had anything to hide. Yes, he was a mysterious cloaked and hooded figure. He was, however, an </span>
  <em>
    <span>open and forthright</span>
  </em>
  <span> mysterious cloaked and hooded figure, whose motives in hiding his face were only so he could dramatically reveal himself at the last moment to be the true king of wherever-the-hell-this-was returned from his exile to resume the throne. Or something like that, anyway. He’d go with whatever suited the scene.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good. Pay up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was starting to look squirrelly. “How much?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Two gold each.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She was squinting at Molly again now, and for a moment, he thought-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did she look </span>
  <em>
    <span>nervous</span>
  </em>
  <span>? Well, you got that, sometimes, out in the sticks, people assuming that the ‘demonic heritage’ part of being a tiefling meant the power to damn people more-or-less at will. Hadn’t expected it from a gate guard here, of course, but who was he to turn his nose up at a bargaining advantage? Under his hood, he grinned, angling it just right to flash the guard a glimpse of red eyes and the gleam of sharp teeth.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, I can- I can definitely pay that,” Nott said quickly. “I can- You know what, I’ll get it. Don’t even look. Here you go, four from me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The woman’s eyes lingered again on Molly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...well, she’s better than the last one,” she said after a moment. “All right. Let them in!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The great gates creaked open - gods, when was the last time someone oiled those things? Or were they doing it on purpose to get a more intimidating effect? They might want to reconsider it, if that was the plan, though. The sound they made was like a dying mouse, and that wouldn’t frighten anybody except, possibly, other mice - and they trotted through.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was another narrow ravine on the other side of the gate, sloping down towards a broad valley, so thickly forested that it took a while for Molly to make out the shapes of low shacks and huts and hovels clustered along the treeline, the smoke of cookfires and the gleam of water somewhere below.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly half-wanted to take his hood down, to get a better look, but...no. ‘Purple tiefling’ was distinctive enough, ‘devilishly handsome purple tiefling with a peacock tattoo’ was just </span>
  <em>
    <span>asking </span>
  </em>
  <span>for trouble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They rode just far enough to be out of sight of the gate before conferring about where to go next, and settled on a brothel run by the Mardun family, called the Landlocked Lady, where they might be able to find some help, if they were lucky. Or at least, would be able to find out if they’d have to back out on going back to Zadash for their pay, having just wiped out some of the Gentleman’s allies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then, there was the Run itself.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly had imagined, when he’d first heard the Gentleman’s description of the place, that Shadycreek Run would be brash and bold, a place of defiance. Maybe not the thigh-slapping pirates of Gustav’s melodramas, the little plays they’d put on sometimes in towns too small to be worth the effort and expense of setting up all the equipment they needed for a full show, but still a place of freedom and courage in lawlessness. It was not. A dead-eyed youth, wrapped in nothing but what looked like the remnants of a filmy shawl, leant against one wall, staring forward with the air of someone to whom life or death made no real difference anymore. A handful of filthy, starveling children were crouched in a gutter, playing a game of knucklebones with- yes, those were actual knucklebones, and from something humanoid, unless Molly missed his guess. Nearby, a stripped and beaten body lay still on the street, where someone had torn up cobbles for some other use of their own - unconscious or dead, Molly could not tell. There were other people too, skulking and hobbling along, their heads down, trying to avoid notice. Molly watched them, and saw the way they hunched deeper into themselves under his scrutiny, and hurried their steps, just a little, in the hopes of escaping it before too long. This, then, was Shadycreek Run and its vaunted freedom, where no law existed but what a strong arm and a ruthless will could conjure, as absolute a tyranny of the strong over the weak as any lawmaster could hope to impose.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, worse than all of it, the slow, creeping feeling that he had been here before. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We went north to Shadycreek Run and we started the Tomb Takers</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Cree had said. But that- That hadn’t been him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Molly </span>
  </em>
  <span>had never been to Shadycreek Run in his life, even if part of his mind kept whispering that if he took a left here, and wove through a tangle of twisting alleyways between buildings that listed crazily against each other, like two drunkards holding each other up, they might reach the Landlocked Lady a little faster...provided they could dodge the cutpurses, and the more overt breed of thug, or the-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He frowned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...what are the Taskers?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The…” Keg blinked at him. “Oh. I...didn’t realise I mentioned those.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau was squinting. “Yeah, I don’t remember that either.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “Yeah- No, I probably just misheard-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, you heard right,” Keg said, sounding...confused, but not suspicious, thank </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “The Taskers are...probably the only other people in this shithole that might be of use.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of use?” Nott asked, her eyes gone saucer-wide. “They’re good guys?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg gave a vague sort of shrug. “Uh- As much as anyone’s a good guy here. They try not to get- They try to protect the innocent from getting killed or fucked over. Obviously, they’re not particularly successful, but they’re not under the thumb of any particular group.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly blinked. There was something tickling at the back of his mind…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...so, is this, like, a protection-scheme type thing, or…?” Beau asked in an undertone, casting a look around. Molly could see why - there were so many innocents being fucked over just within their field of view that it was easy to see how any one group might find themselves a bit overwhelmed by it. Molly was feeling pretty overwhelmed himself, and he was just passing through.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s...uh...it’s altruistic, strangely,” Keg admitted. “I kinda forgot about them because we always thought they were just kinda nerds. Uh- But, you know, now I’m trying to be a little bit better. So, uh, yeah. They- They might be helpful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...no harm in asking,” Molly agreed cautiously. “If they hate the Shepherds, they might be up for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg gave a smothered sort of bark of laughter. “Yeah- Yeah, they definitely hate the Shepherds. So, if anyone’s going to ask them, it probably...probably shouldn’t be me. I don’t- Don’t know if me leaving has really got around all that much yet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So...how do we find them?” Nott asked, leaning over the head of her horse. “Do they have a uniform, or how do you know them? How do you know who they are, how can you identify them?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh...not really? I mean...most of them wear chain mail? Leather on one shoulder? Sometimes they paint a bit of blue on there, just to let people know, but there’s a lot of gangs that use blue. Only so many colours, you know? And, I mean, they’re still- They still want paid, they’re just not, you know, assholes about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...It’s kind of cool,” Beau said after a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shrugged. “Nearest thing to law that exists out here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly wrinkled his nose. He didn’t-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He would be the first to say he didn’t like the Crownsguard. And that the law, by and large, was written by the people on top to keep them there, with their boots very firmly on everyone else’s necks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But here he was, in a place without law, and there that boot still was. It was a slightly different boot - less polish and fine words, more iron hobnails and breaking your kneecaps if you got out of line - but the necks underneath it all looked about the same. How did you leave a place like this better than you had found it? Where were you even supposed to start?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, killing the Iron Shepherds sounded like a pretty good first step.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Landlocked Lady stood in an open plaza, or what passed for one. Shadycreek Run was built on Shadycreek Run, so that the buildings on every side loomed and tottered, listing over so far that they nearly touched, and casting what might’ve started out as a sunny square into gloom even with the sun still high in the west. The Landlocked Lady, however, stood out like a...well, like a beautiful, ostentatious two-storey manor, all arches and ornate plasterwork and the brightly-painted bows of a wooden mock of a ship, in a square surrounded on all sides by high and rickety tenements that looked like prayer alone was holding them up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly liked the look of the place </span>
  <em>
    <span>immediately</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and that wasn’t something he could say about anything else he’d seen of Shadycreek Run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau brought up a hand to shade her eyes - unnecessarily, given just how dim it was down here in the shadow of all those buildings - and looked up at the sign that dangled from the fingers of the ship’s mermaid figurehead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I totally get the name of the place now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s a really good- It’s a consistent brand,” Nott agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly grinned, hidden in the shadows of his hood. “I don’t know why more places don’t try something like this, this is great.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished Yasha were here - brothels weren’t her thing, by and large, and she’d needed the custom explained to her the first time the circus had stopped in a town that had one, but she liked strange things, new things, beautiful things about as much as Molly did, and the Landlocked Lady was all three.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He could feel an odd itch between his shoulder-blades now, like someone was watching him, but when he tried to look around - or at least turn his head apparently-carelessly in such a direction that he could see that way, without making it clear he was actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>looking </span>
  </em>
  <span>- he couldn’t see anyone who might be staring. All the same, it made him uneasy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should probably get off the streets,” he added hastily. “Lay low for a bit. They know we’re after them now, and we don’t know how long Nila’s concealment spell can last. No sense pushing it. And we’re right outside a pretty interesting-looking brothel anyway, so...let’s see if the inside lives up to...all this?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...well, okay,” Nott said after a moment. “Let’s...let’s go in, then. Am I...I’m not going to- Do I have to fuck somebody in there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not if you’re not paying for it,” Molly said, with as much cheerfulness as he could muster. “Or...being paid, I guess.” He took another look at Nott, and considered. “...maybe not for another couple of years…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>You’re</span>
  </em>
  <span> only two!” Nott protested, but looked relieved. “And I- It’s not a line of work I was ever...I mean, who’d...no.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>worried about this?” Keg butted in. “They would be more worried about having to fuck you, my man!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“I’m a lady.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My lady,” Keg corrected, with a little challenging smirk that...huh. Well. Okay then. </span>
  <em>
    <span>That </span>
  </em>
  <span>was how you did that without coming off as a creep in need of a knee somewhere painful. Molly hadn’t thought that was possible, and he’d been on the receiving end of that line before. “I call everyone ‘my man’.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott looked down at herself and shook her head. “But...yes, you’re right.” She plucked at her tunic, and her mouth twisted. “You’re right, that’s a fair point.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If any of the Marduns are in, we might be able to-” Keg broke off, looking dubious. “To be honest, guys, there’s not a lot of options, but...we might be able to get some help out of them. I don’t know for sure. If- Anyway- If- In any case, it’s a place to- regroup. This brothel is not...you know, it’s not in the business of spilling everybody’s secrets out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was already nodding. “Let’s go in.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shot a wary glance at Nila, who obligingly transformed from horse to firbolg. She didn’t, it had to be said, look particularly comfortable here. Had she ever seen a brothel before? Or- Did they have them, in her clan? Molly hadn’t thought they would, but then, he’d never seen the Guitao clan’s village proper, just Jumnda’s hut. And, really, what would he know about it? He’d only existed two years, after all, and most of what the circus had seen had been pretty ordinary Imperial towns and villages, without much variety to be had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I apologise in advance for all the shit you’re about to see,” Keg said awkwardly, and threw open the brothel door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Inside, the Landlocked Lady was...well. Molly had a few personal definitions of heaven. He hadn’t expected to find any of them in Shadycreek Run.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The air smelt of lavender and vanilla and incense, an overpowering, mouthwatering smell. Lavender was easy enough to come by - it would grow just about anywhere - but </span>
  <em>
    <span>where </span>
  </em>
  <span>had the proprietor managed to get a hold of vanilla, and would they notice if Molly pocketed a stick or two of the incense? Even if it hadn’t just been a nice thing to have, vanilla could go for a fortune even further south. There were sheer silks hanging from a low, uneven wooden ceiling, and a scattering of low round spindly tables, patrons gathered around them to eat or play cards or make conversation with the workers ahead of heading up to find somewhere more private.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A second look, though, and Molly’s stomach turned. He couldn’t have said why. Maybe it was the way this place put him in mind of the Tri-Spires, back in Zadash, a little island of luxury with people starving outside the walls. Maybe it was something in the incense - a faint bitter note underlying the vanilla. Or...his eyes lingered for a moment on the wrist of one of the workers - an elven woman, and old enough to have a delicate fan of crow’s feet at the edge of the one eye Molly could see from this angle, which probably meant she was centuries old - and the bruise that ringed it. It could’ve been nothing - it wasn’t as if Molly hadn’t paid and been paid for a bit of rough play in the past, even if most regular workers at a place like this wouldn’t want to keep lasting marks - but Molly couldn’t quite put away the niggling fear that there was something worse at play here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barkeep was human, and getting on towards middle age, if he wasn’t already there, with a silk shirt, a pointed beard and an extravagantly curly moustache.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why, hello, everyone! Glad you could make it. Welcome! Welcome to the Landlocked Lady! How could I be of service? Oh- You are a big one!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila smiled and nodded, as if she got this sort of thing all the time - probably she did. “I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wonderful, are you looking for work?” There was something sly in the barkeep’s smile now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, she’s not,” Keg cut in, before Nila could reply or anyone could try to find out whether or not she understood what sort of ‘work’ he probably meant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, that is...any of the rest of you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His eyes lingered on Molly, and if not for that creeping, uneasy feeling, he might’ve taken him up on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe later, I’ll have to hear terms. We were actually looking for someone?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man’s smile widened. “Ah - someone special? Well, we have a great many </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>special people in our employ, of course, though they may not all be available. And we have rooms for rent, as well as for companionship, if you want to stay a while longer…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll need all of that above, and a little bit more,” Beau said flatly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott actually looked faintly scandalised. “Well, I mean, not the companionship-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve had a hard week. Molly, you going to want-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shook his head, then paused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...if I were looking for work,” he asked, eyeing the barkeep thoughtfully, and trying not to let the memory of the bruise on the elven woman’s wrist show on his face or in his voice. “What would the terms be? What sort of house is it you run here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The barkeep’s smile widened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah-ha. Well, the house would take a certain cut of your earnings, so long as you remained with us, and of course you’d owe us bed and board - at a reduced rate, obviously, since employee quarters aren’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite </span>
  </em>
  <span>what we’d offer our guests...but of course you could charge what you liked. Coin, goods, sometimes services, although it’s harder to divide those with the house, and there’s no real certainty the other party will follow through…but if services are the only thing that will do, we can put a financial rate on most of those, and add it to your living expenses.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And I’d be free to leave anytime?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>A pause. “Any time so long as you don’t owe anything for your keep,” the barkeep said smoothly, after just a second too long for Molly’s peace of mind. “If you leave while you owe us money, you will be hunted. Guest </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>employee. But I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever looking for work,” Molly said, trying to make it sound casual, easy, while at the same time figuring out whether the barkeep was on the level or not. Even if he was, this sounded like the sort of situation that might be easy to get into, but not nearly as easy to get out of, and he couldn’t think how to ask if everyone here was working on that basis, or whether- They didn’t know what these Marduns’ problem with the Iron Shepherds even was. It might easily just be a business rivalry, competition over the slave trade, how were they to know?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau, next to him, was looking faintly greenish now. Keg just looked grimly resigned, and Molly couldn’t see Nott or Nila’s faces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But,” he went on quickly, before the barkeep could jump on it, “That’s not actually the sort of work we’re here for. We were sent to talk to your bosses? Friend of theirs in Zadash heard they were having some difficulties, and he sent us to help out, though we’ve run into a few...a few troubles of our own on the way up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“My-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The people that actually own this place,” Keg cut in. “I know you like to pretend, but, uh-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah-” The barkeep’s expression didn’t change, but something about it became a fraction less oily for a second. “Are you referring to…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Marduns.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The Marduns are…” the barkeep made an odd noise that was not quite a whistle and not quite a word. “...not around here today. They are, ah, at the Estate Sybaritic.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>Now, </span>
  <em>
    <span>there </span>
  </em>
  <span>was a name to conjure with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg’s face screwed up. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s- It’s their estate, it’s where they live.” The Barkeep looked rather disappointed to have to spell it out so bluntly. His voice, too, had lost some of its airy, simpering quality. He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>seem </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be lying, though. Or, if he was, he was so generally shifty anyway that even Molly, who could also usually be classified somewhere between ‘shifty’, ‘dodgy’ and ‘probably conning someone’, couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth or not.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lord Anselm does pass through on occasion,” the barkeep added, “But he’s not here today. Ah- The rest of them I’m sure are busy with their own business, but if I see any of them, I could ask, ah, if they remember summoning some assistance from...who was it, who sent you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau and Molly exchanged a look over Nott’s head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...uh…” Molly tried weakly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A gentleman in Zadash,” Beau cut in over him, “Who is prepared to offer many gifts.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A familiar gleam came into the barkeep’s eyes. “...I see. We have had...dealings with this gentleman before. And who has he sent?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another exchange of looks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s- Um. Uh-” Keg stalled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The- The- The Mighty- The Mighty Nein?” Nott tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I’m trying to come up with a fake name!” Keg hissed, just loud enough for Molly to hear, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>maybe </span>
  </em>
  <span>not loud enough that the barkeep could hear it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, um-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh- Rick?” Keg settled on. “Rick is my name.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Surprisingly enough, it even actually worked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Rick?” the barkeep repeated, raising an eyebrow, almost back to his original state of smugness. “Very well. I'll make a note. If this is pressing business, you are more than welcome to attempt to summon them at the estate, as I know not how often they pass through, but-” he gave a low laugh. “In the meantime, you said you wished rooms and company?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...maybe just the rooms,” Beau muttered. That greenish tinge had returned to her face again now. “Shit. Fuck. Yeah. Just the rooms.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, we’ll need rooms for sure,” Nott agreed. “Er…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How many?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Give us a second there, Champ,” Keg cut in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott made a strangled noise that sounded like she had tried, and failed, to strangle a laugh. “Champ?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“His name’s Champ?” Beau demanded, her voice nearly cracking with hilarity. Molly couldn’t blame her, since he was just barely keeping a lid on laughter himself. Every time they rolled into a new place, he got increasing evidence that he’d been incredibly lucky that he was coherent enough to have veto power when Gustav was trying to think up names to put on his paperwork. He could, objectively, have done a lot worse. Being named ‘Champ’, for instance. Or ‘Beau’, if he wanted to be snippy about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Told you it was a shitter! But- Yeah, anyway…” Keg hustled them a little way away, out of earshot of the desk, so long as they kept their voices down. “I don't really feel like I want to stay around this guy that much longer. Do you guys want to go to this estate, or do you want to stay here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The estate-? What would we do there?” Nott asked, looking anxious.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“I do not like this man,” Nila agreed, her eyes flickering back to the desk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg scowled. “Yeah, that makes two of us, Nila.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Three,” Molly corrected helpfully.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know, that’s where the Marduns are,” Keg said, shrugging. “You were looking for them anyway, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The three of the Nein remaining - what did that make them? The Mighty...Drei? Molly had heard Caleb counting out coins under his breath in Zemnian a hundred times, but somehow never paid enough attention to know if that was right or not - shared awkward glances.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re looking for one of their family,” Nott said awkwardly. “But I don’t know- We don’t know enough to just march up there and say ‘Hey, we’re looking for your daughter.’ We don’t even know if it’s a daughter, or- or a niece or something. We- It- I don’t know.” She wrung her hands. “We don’t know if she’s on the outs with her family, if- if they’re the ones who had her killed or kidnapped-”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Has</span>
  </em>
  <span> she been killed or kidnapped?” Molly asked, with interest. He’d missed that part of the discussion back at the Evening Nip, if she had been.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t know!” Nott threw up her hands. “We don’t know anything! She’s just in some kind of trouble that the Gentleman wants us to help with! We’d be marching into a big question mark!”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Beau butted in, “And the problem that she wants help with is the Iron Shepherds. Two birds with one stone, we win. Still going along with that plan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott’s hackles went up. “What, so Caleb- That’s just...what, a hiccup to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No!” Beau scrubbed a hand over her face. “I just...the plan...hasn’t changed. It’s just that we’ve got one more person to rescue now. How...Molly, do you know...is he...not going to say okay, but still alive, at least? Where are they?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. Caleb...was still a way north of them, but he seemed to have stopped moving now. At least, not in any significant way. The Iron Shepherds had been...maybe an hour ahead of them, after the fight on the Glory Run Road. They’d had carts, though, and if all those horses had escaped injury in the fight, Molly would eat his own horse. That would’ve slowed them down. And if they were just now stopping...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I think they’re there,” he said after a moment. “At the Sour Nest. Just arriving, probably, they can’t be that far ahead of us, not with all those carts. We had to ride pretty slowly just to stay behind them. I don’t think they’ve- I know they haven’t started...he’s still not hurt, but I can’t say how long that’ll last.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Lorenzo doesn’t like to hang about,” Keg muttered. “Shit. If they’re there, either they’re being tortured, or they’re watching as someone else is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s stomach clenched. Caleb- Caleb was all right, he couldn’t feel any pain from him. Just an odd, grey, chilly feeling of...distance, almost. The same outside-himself feeling that had been creeping up on Molly in the days since Caleb was taken, like he’d taken something essential to himself and buried it, to keep it safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have something I would like to do now,” Nila said quietly, producing something from an inside pocket of her tunic. “In these moments, I have a little bag of treasures that I smell.” She held out the pouch she had just produced, and reached into it to lift out a clump of moss and a few loose, dried flowers that Molly didn’t recognise. “They're little treasures that I collect along the way of things that are significant and meaningful to me. And, if I smell it, it tells me what- what the experience will be like. So, if we leave this man and go to this- Ophelia Mardun, let me see what my smell check does? Okay?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott’s eyes widened. “It’s like...telling a fortune, but with smelling things.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not a method I’ve run into before,” Molly admitted. “We should compare notes, when all this is over. See how our methods line up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila blinked at him. “Oh- Do you also have something that you use to-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve...got a few,” Molly admitted. The cards would always be his favourite, but Thistlebucket had taught him every means of fortune-telling he knew, up to gyromancy, which was basically just an excuse to make yourself dizzy and charge the nearest mark for the privilege of watching it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau made a faint, derisive noise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...are you just getting high?” Keg asked, frowning at Nila.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She might be,” Beau muttered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila, apparently completely unbothered, lifted the pouch to her nose. It was a pretty ordinary-looking thing, to Molly’s eyes. Brown leather, held shut by a flap over the opening. She brought it up to her face, and buried her nose in it, breathing in deeply, her eyes closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” she breathed out after a moment. “We should go to see this Ophelia. It will be a good outcome.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly eyed the bag.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...can I have a hit of that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila blinked. “You may smell it, if you wish,” she said after a moment. “But I do not know if this works for others. It is...a very personal thing. Do your cards answer others’ questions?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. “...never tried it,” he admitted. His cards were...well, obviously not </span>
  <em>
    <span>private</span>
  </em>
  <span>, he’d show them to all and sundry, but they were...he didn’t want to just hand them off to anyone who had an interest. He’d put a lot of work into those, as much as he had for his coat, almost, and it would probably be more by the time he ran out of cards. “Maybe we can trade, sometime,” he added, just to seem friendly, “How- Is this a common divination method, in your clan? I’ve got a...you might call it a professional interest in these things?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila held out the pouch, and smiled. “I would like that. Maybe when this is over, you can show me your cards?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...sure. It’ll be interesting. So, I just breathe it in?” Inhalables weren’t Molly’s usual fare, but he thought he got the principle of the thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s right. Concentrate on the experience you wish to foretell, and just…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged, buried his nose in the bag, and breathed in. He wasn’t...he hadn’t been thinking about Ophelia Mardun. Or, really, anything in particular, but...somehow, the thought crept in. Caleb was still wherever the Shepherds had stopped - the Sour Nest, Molly thought, it had to be - and still...blank. Distant. Shrouded in something like a grey mist, even as Molly’s wrists tingled with the far-off awareness of Caleb’s pain. They’d strung him up by the wrists. For torture, or- Had they done that to all of them? Was Yasha in the same state? Was Jester, was Fjord?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He breathed in- The smell took a moment to identify. The bitter tang of ash and the aftertaste of fire, but beneath that, a...he could only think of it as a greenish sort of smell, and something floral, faintly sweet, just at the edge of his senses.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He blinked, and drew his nose away. That was...huh. He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>high - and he’d had enough experience to say that with a reasonable degree of surety - but it was definitely...something.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That was...interesting…” he said, mostly just to have something to say, handing the pouch back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila smiled. “I’m sure your cards are interesting too. Did you- Do you also think it will be a good experience?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s…” Molly thought back to what he smelled. “...hard to say.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila nodded, as if that was entirely to be expected - it probably was. The stink pouch didn’t come with any convenient guidance about what smells meant what, and just ‘if it smells good, it’ll be a positive experience’ seemed a bit straightforward, for the sort of fortune-telling Molly was used to. He’d have to ask about that, at some point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg wanted a turn at the pouch yet, and got something that made her face screw up and her eyes cross, and then the barkeep - </span>
  <em>
    <span>Champ</span>
  </em>
  <span>, seriously, who named a kid something like that? Or, worse, named </span>
  <em>
    <span>themself </span>
  </em>
  <span>that - wanted to get in on the action, which was apparently where Nila drew the line. Of course, the man proceeded to huffily proclaim that he didn’t want a piece of the stink pouch anyway, and went on to ask about their room preferences.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly glanced around.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They probably weren’t going to find anywhere more comfortable than here in all of Shadycreek Run, but...his eyes flicked again to the elven woman. Her sleeve had slipped down now to cover the bruises, but one glimpse had been enough. And Nila didn’t like the barkeep.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...there anywhere else we could spend the night?” he asked, without much hope. “You said something about another tavern?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg screwed up her face. “...we’re already at this one, though?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah - We can just put a chair under the door or something,” Beau added, looking at Nila. “And he doesn’t look that tough, we can probably scare him into behaving.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m right here, you know!” the barkeep protested.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We know!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wherever we’re sleeping, we might want to double up,” Molly cut in, “No sense in taking chances, with the Shepherds still out there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The phantom pain in his wrists was getting worse now, and the shadow of a dull, throbbing ache was starting in his shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau grunted. “Two in one room, three in the other?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Safer than just one of us on our own,” Molly said, which didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically </span>
  </em>
  <span>count as agreeing with her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau grunted. “Okay. Keg?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah?”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Wanna be in with me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg’s eyes went wide. Beneath her stubble - starting to approach being a proper beard at this point, after days on the road - Molly thought he could detect the hint of a blush.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What- Uh- Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Sounds great.” She coughed, and looked down at her plate boots.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I must warn you,” Champ spoke up, “If it's more to a room and you require a companion, the group rates are a bit more expensive."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah- No. No companions.” A speculative look passed over Beau’s face as she glanced at Keg again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He means slumber parties,” Keg muttered to Nila. “If we all want to have a nice rest together, just sleeping, it's more money.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila looked utterly charmed. “We have that in my clan, too. We all set up a huge nest of leaves and sleep together.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Are you sure you’re not looking for work?” Champ asked, with an insinuating little giggle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The three of us’ll take the other room,” Molly added quickly. “I don’t think any of us needs to be on our own right now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was two gold pieces for Beau and Keg to have their sleepover, and three for Molly, Nott and Nila to have a much more familiar and less racy kind of sleepover, the kind that Molly would occasionally tag along for with Toya and the Mona and Yuli and Yasha, when she was around. How was it that </span>
  <em>
    <span>Beau </span>
  </em>
  <span>was having more sex than him? That would be the first order of business, he promised himself, as soon as they got back to Zadash and he could be sure the workers were there by choice. Book a night at the Pillow Trove with the Gentleman’s payoff and find out if Phryne’s hands really were as good as advertised. Even just a shoulder-rub sounded like a great idea right now. For all of them, maybe - they could all do with a bit of spoiling after this experience, the four who’d been taken especially.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The keys were every bit as ornate as the rest of the place, and Molly thought there wouldn’t be any objections to him leaving it in the lock, just in case, as he, Nott and Nila headed up. Okay, he didn’t think Champ the barkeep would actually try anything, but Nila pretty clearly wasn’t comfortable with the idea he </span>
  <em>
    <span>might</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and they’d all sleep better for not having to worry about having their room broken into overnight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-so, in your clan, is it...you don’t do anything before marrying, or…” Nott was saying, somewhere up ahead. It sounded like a conversation Molly should want to get in on, but his shoulders were killing him, and right now all he wanted was to lie down flat and not </span>
  <em>
    <span>think </span>
  </em>
  <span>for a while.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We do not...it is considered as a- a commitment, to mate with someone. Not...necessarily a lifelong one,” she added, “But- There is an expectation of- of responsibility, on both parts, should a child or- or any other consequence come of the mating. Though I suppose the others might not need to worry about that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott startled. “Oh- So you know that they’re...uh...that they’re planning to…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila blinked great, guileless brown eyes. “Oh- Are they not? I shouldn’t have assumed-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No- I mean...I guess they are, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila smiled a private smile. “Oh. That is good. I’m happy for them, that they can find that in a time like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I...think it’s more of a solace thing,” Molly offered distractedly, rubbing a thumb over the ornate wrought-iron handles of the keys.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...is that not also something I should be happy for them to find?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. He’d never really thought about it that way. He’d never wanted sex when he was miserable - it was </span>
  <em>
    <span>fun</span>
  </em>
  <span>, first and foremost, and not the sort he liked to have to distract himself - but yeah, he could see Beau being the type.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their room was a way along from Keg and Beau’s, which was a very mixed blessing, depending on whether or not they’d been seen by anyone who was going to tell the Iron Shepherds about them, or whether the Shepherds had put the word out about their pursuit. Not like they couldn’t handle a bit of noise, anyway. By the time they got there, Molly was giving serious thought to just collapsing into bed with his boots still on, since he hadn’t put his jewellery back in since the gate.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then the door swung open, and all thoughts of sleep were knocked out of Molly’s mind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was someone in the room already, waiting for them.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The room they’d rented was dim, and not the largest Molly had ever been asked to share, the light of one flickering lantern illuminating the vague shapes of the bed, and the small figure sitting at the foot of it.</p><p>“We didn’t pay for company,” Molly tried, hoping that that was all this was, that they could send this person off with a few coins for their trouble or a promise to help them get out of here if they were under a contract they couldn’t get out from, once the Iron Shepherds were dealt with. All the same, his hand inched towards the hilt of one of his swords.</p><p>Their unexpected visitor made a gravelly sound in their throat that sounded like it might’ve started out with ambitions to be a laugh. Cruelly dashed ambitions, since the effect was more like the grinding of a large piece of machinery with something stuck in its gears.</p><p>“Nah. I, uh, I let myself in. Figured you wouldn’t mind.”</p><p>Molly froze. He groped, desperately, for something to say, something nondescript, neutral enough to let this person, whoever they were, think he knew what they were talking about, but nothing came. His head was pounding and his shoulders felt as though every shift should have sent agony tearing through him, so that the <em> lack </em>of pain, the phantom feeling of discomfort where there ought to have been agony, was almost worse than the real thing would have been.</p><p>“We <em> do </em>mind,” Nott said irritably, mercifully sparing him the need to say anything to this person.</p><p>The stranger - a halfling, Molly saw now, with a gaunt, sallow face, wild hair and a crossbow on their back - stopped, eyeing Nott with an expression that slid perilously close to jealousy.</p><p>“...who’s this supposed to be, then?”</p><p>Molly paused, wondering if he ought to give a false name and, if so, what it should be. It looked like he was already stuck with his own alias. Why hadn’t he seen this coming? These were Lucien’s old stomping grounds, after all. Of course there'd still be people up here who remembered him - it had only been two years since Molly woke up in the dirt, after all. This wasn’t irrecoverable, yet. He just needed to be convincing enough that whoever this was would assume he knew everything he needed to and go <em> away </em>.</p><p>“Nott,” Nott said, with a decided little jut of the chin. “The Brave. Comma optional.”</p><p>The halfling gave a sort of acknowledging grunt.</p><p>“...you’ve replaced the Tomb Takers?”</p><p>There was something almost accusatory in that voice. And something else that bordered on <em> hurt </em> . Oh, gods. Not another one. What had Molly ever done to deserve this? He’d- He tried to be a good person. Maybe he didn’t always manage it quite as well as he’d like to, but he’d liked to think his were the sort of moral grey areas that were just...white that had got a bit grubby somewhere. <em> Not </em>the sort of thing that warranted cults of complete strangers with a fanatical loyalty to the previous occupant of his body, anyway.</p><p>“‘Replaced’ is a strong word…” Molly said cautiously. “We’re travelling together.”</p><p>Nila was frowning a little. “What are these ‘Tomb Takers’?”</p><p>“That’s a...a long story,” Molly hedged. “Which we really...really don’t have time to get into at the moment…”</p><p>“It sounds like grave robbery.” Nila said disapprovingly, turning great, disappointed brown eyes on Molly. “I hope that you do not mean grave robbery.”</p><p>“...it does sound that way, doesn’t it,” Molly agreed, rather helplessly. It wasn’t that he had anything <em> against </em>grave-robbing, exactly - he was still lugging around a helmet taken off an ancient battlefield just because it looked cool, after all, which was probably about the same thing - but since the only grave he ever remembered digging up was his own, it was a bit much to ask him to feel sorry about it.</p><p>The halfling’s eyes narrowed a little, confusion twisting their face as they looked to Molly as if...oh, gods. As if <em> waiting for instructions </em> . Maybe even waiting for <em> orders </em>.</p><p>“So. How long’ve you been back?” the halfling’s eyes lingered on where Molly’s cloak had fallen open, revealing the bright colours of his coat underneath. “Must’ve been a while, if you’re coming in the south gate.”</p><p>“It has- It has been a while,” Molly said, trying to sound casual and unaffected, even as the dull ache in his shoulders sharpened for a moment, making his breath come out in a hiss. “Sorry about not getting in touch sooner, but I wasn’t sure if I could get a message to you without it being intercepted.”</p><p>“Who are you, anyway?” Nott cut in, glaring a little. She was not, yet, reaching for her crossbow, but something about the way she was holding her shoulders suggested that it wouldn’t be long now.</p><p>Thank all the gods for Nott, Molly thought. Could they actually get through this? He’d done it once already, with less to go on than he had now.</p><p>“You can tell her,” he said, because the halfling still looked uncertain.</p><p>The halfling paused. “...Sito,” they said after a moment.</p><p>“Old friend,” Molly added, hoping that Sito was, in fact, an old friend and not something more dangerous. ‘Old friend’ was trouble enough.</p><p>“Do you know anything about the Iron Shepherds?” Nila asked, leaning forward a little, the effect somehow only making her appear more looming.</p><p>Sito’s eyes narrowed. They smiled. “...so, that’s what you’re here for. I’d have expected you to find a bit more help, first, though…”</p><p>“I have help!” Molly pointed out. “Well, some of it. Not as much as we might want, but we’re working on that.”</p><p>“Do you know Cree?” Nott put in, giving Sito another suspicious look.</p><p>Sito paused. “Yeah,” they said after a moment. “Yeah, I do. Is she- I mean, we haven’t seen each other since...y’know. I don’t know where she is, but...you’ve run into her? Is she here too?”</p><p>“We- We have,” Molly said, extemporising wildly. “She’s not with us, though. I did offer,” he lied, because it seemed safer than the alternative. “But she- er- She’s found something else to do with her life, it looks like. Same with-'' What had that name been? “Same with Tyffial.”</p><p>Sito had gone still now. Dangerously so.</p><p>“...they left? And they’re- They’re alive? Still?”</p><p>Molly’s heart skipped a beat. Had- He’d never <em> met </em>Tyffial, who was to say she wasn’t dead? All Cree had said was that she knew where this Tyffial person was, which did imply she hadn’t died...not that Cree had heard of, anyway. And Zadash was a long way away.</p><p>“Last time I saw them, they were,” he said, trying to make it sound easy. It didn’t quite work. “It’s...been a while. And it’s not exactly a safe line of work - at least, Cree’s isn’t.”</p><p>Had Cree mentioned what Tyffial was doing? If she had, Molly hadn’t committed it to memory, except as a general note of another city to avoid. He hadn’t thought there’d be any of them left up here - because if there had been, wouldn’t they have been watching the grave? Cree said they knew he’d come back- or, that <em> Lucien </em>would come back. If any of them had still been in Shadycreek Run, wouldn’t they have been looking? He’d fallen back on that thought too much, relied on it, and now look where it had landed him.</p><p>“They left us- Left <em> you </em>. And you left them alive.”</p><p>Molly was abruptly aware of a precipice opening up beneath his feet. What was he supposed to say to that? What sort- What sort of controlling arsehole had Lucien been, that that was even something worth remarking on?</p><p>He managed a careless sort of shrug. “If they’re out, they’re out,” he said easily, “All it proves is that they weren’t-” What would a controlling arsehole who might well kill his followers for leaving him say to excuse <em> not </em>doing that? “-weren’t dedicated enough to see things through to the end, if one little death was going to put them off.”</p><p>Nila’s eyes had narrowed a little, her heavy brows drawing together. “That is not a very fair way to talk about people.”</p><p>Yes, Molly <em> knew </em>that, but- Nila didn’t know. And that was a good thing, because if she could tell he was pretending, probably so could Sito.</p><p>Sito...had Cree mentioned  a Sito? Molly didn’t think she had. Tyffial, Zoran...another one he couldn’t remember...had that been Sito? It might’ve been. He’d thought it began with a vowel - Attis, maybe? - but he’d been wrong before, and it had been weeks ago, and Molly just wanted to go to bed and not <em> deal </em>with this.</p><p>“I was the one who died,” he retorted, as carelessly as he could manage. “And if <em> I’m </em>not backing out, they have no excuse.”</p><p>Sito’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not afraid that they might tell what they know? I’m not questioning your judgement-” they added hastily - too hastily, and for a moment they looked almost afraid. “But it’s- it <em> is </em>a risk.”</p><p>Molly tried to project calm confidence...or at least look a bit less confused and nauseated than he felt. By the look on Sito’s face, he wasn’t doing too well at it.</p><p>What had Lucien been <em> doing </em> ? It wasn’t as if he’d been able to ask Cree for details - he hadn’t really wanted to. Whatever it was, it was nothing to do with <em> Molly </em> , and at the time it hadn’t seemed like it would <em> matter </em>- not when all he wanted was to avoid everything to do with...whatever it was Lucien had been doing.</p><p>“Let me worry about that.” He paused, groping for a change of subject. “What about you? What have you been doing since I’ve been away?”</p><p>Sito got, if anything, even more shifty at that. “Oh- Uh. This and that. Been keeping my head low, since the Tomb Takers split, taking whatever work comes up.”</p><p>“Did you...ever work for a group called the Iron Shepherds?” Nott hazarded, catching Molly’s eye.</p><p>Sito snorted. “Those assholes? They’d be as likely to sell me as hire me. Or sell me after they’d hired me. Saves them pay, too, which I’d think was pretty clever if I wasn’t the one on the wrong side of it.”</p><p>“They are <em> evil </em>people,” Nila said fiercely, and Molly was reminded once again of her ‘hit Lorenzo with lightning until he dies’ plan. </p><p>Sito shrugged. “We’re none of us exactly angels here. Doesn’t explain why you’re interested.”</p><p>“They took my mate,” Nila said, low and fierce. “My son. And...others, dear to these two and their companions. We are going to get them back, and kill the people who took them.”</p><p>Sito’s eyes settled on Molly again, and this time, Molly could see the suspicion in them. He was going to lay money on it that Lucien hadn’t had anyone he could call ‘dear to him’. Well, maybe Cree. She hadn’t been surprised at Molly acting like she was Ya- like she was someone he cared about, anyway. But since he’d already claimed that Cree had started a new life and was enjoying the Myriad <em> far </em>too much to come back to Shadycreek Run and...whatever it was that Lucien had been doing, that really wasn’t doing him any favours.</p><p>“We’ve heard there’s a- a hideout or something,” Nott put in. “The Bitter…”</p><p>“The Sour Nest,” Molly corrected. “It’s about two hours out of town, northeast of here.”</p><p>Something in Sito seemed to shift.</p><p>“Did Lucien tell you that?” they asked, looking over at Nott. Molly could see the confusion flashing across Nila’s face.</p><p><em> Don’t ask </em> , he begged her - or possibly the universe at large - <em> Don’t ask, I can tell you something believable once they’re gone, just don’t ask. </em></p><p>“What- No! Er- Should he have?” Nott, at least, knew enough to be nervous.</p><p>“He should’ve done,” Sito said, looking over at Molly with a new, challenging tilt to the chin.</p><p>“What should he have told us?” Nila asked, her frown deepening, and Molly hated the way her eyes flicked to him, as if he had in the space of a single conversation become more of a stranger to her than he had been at their first meeting.</p><p>Molly fumbled. That was his first mistake. “It...didn’t seem like the sort of thing I could say without explaining how I knew it.”</p><p>Cree had implied the Tomb Takers were secretive, it had taken prodding to make her reveal anything in front of the rest of the Nein, and even then, it seemed like she’d been pretty selective about what she’d told them. Hopefully, that would be enough to cover for the fact that Molly didn’t know <em> what </em>it was about the Sour Nest that Lucien should have known about, and the thought of it made something lurch sickeningly in the pit of his stomach.</p><p>Sito made an acknowledging sort of hum, low in their throat. “I suppose that makes sense. Say - when you saw Tyffial, what was she doing? It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from her.. It’d be good to know she was doing well.”</p><p>Molly fumbled for a convincing answer. Cree was in the Myriad. Sito was...doing odd jobs whose legality wasn’t really an issue because there was no law up here anyway. Would Cree have known, if Tyffial was in the Myriad too? It seemed to be a pretty big organisation, so no guarantee.</p><p>When in doubt, take from life.</p><p>“Joined a travelling circus,” Molly lied. “I was surprised too, but...she seems to like it there. I don’t know what to tell you.”</p><p>Things moved very quickly after that.</p><p>All at once, there was a crossbow aimed and levelled at him, the tip of the bolt resting far, far too close to Molly’s balls for comfort.</p><p>“Except Tyffial’s working as a bodyguard for some high-hat crime boss in Nogvurot,” Sito said, with grim and bitter triumph. “You’re not Lucien.”</p><p>There was the newly-familiar click of Nott cocking her crossbow, and Sito startled a little, as they suddenly found <em> Nott’s </em>crossbow levelled at them, angled just right for the bolt to catch them clean between the eyes.</p><p>“Step away from him. Now.”</p><p>Sito grinned. That is to say, their lips drew back from their teeth into a rictus that could, in the wrong light and given a total lack of ability to judge tone or context, be taken for a smile. They did not lower the crossbow.</p><p>“You can drop the spell.”</p><p>“Not a spell,” Molly said, irritated and resigned and too exhausted to care right now.</p><p>Sito put their head on one side, jerkily, like an automaton. “So...what are you?”</p><p>“A tiefling,” Molly said irritably. “And the name’s Molly. To my friends, anyway.”</p><p>A category to which Sito quite definitely did <em> not </em>belong, whatever the previous occupant of this body might have thought about it.</p><p>Sito snorted. “You look like him. You’re dressed as him-”</p><p>Molly looked down at his black cloak with even more distaste than he usually reserved for it, and wondered if shrugging it off would be enough of a movement to make Sito shoot him. Although, really, if every purple tiefling in a black cloak was at risk of being mistaken for Lucien, someone was going to have a problem on their hands soon enough.</p><p>“-and you were sure as hells trying to convince me you <em> were </em>him. What is this? Some kind of permanent transformation?”</p><p>“Nope, no, definitely not-” Molly was, once again, groping for an explanation. “Honestly, it just…” he looked around to the others for help, and found nothing. Nott looked as lost as he felt, and Nila...Nila looked, if anything, moreso. “...you were so sure I was him, it seemed like it’d make things awkward if I said I wasn’t.”</p><p>Sito snorted. “Oh. Right. Makes sense. Because this is so much less awkward.”</p><p>“I never said it was a good idea!” Molly protested, throwing up his hands.</p><p>It was a mistake, he realised, a second too late, as Sito’s eyes narrowed and caught on Molly’s right hand- not the damned rings again,<em> please </em>-</p><p>“You have the eyes,” Sito said, their voice dragging low and gravelly over the words.</p><p>It took Molly a moment to figure out what he meant, and he was about to snap that, yes, he was a tiefling, most of them had eyes like his when it hit him.</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh, no.</p><p>“I...suppose I do, don’t I?” he managed. Even to him, it sounded weak. He rallied. “Look. I don’t know what these things are, or how I got them - they’ve been there as long as- as long as I can remember. But since we’re agreed that I’m not...whoever it is you’re looking for-”</p><p>“You don’t really think I’m going to believe that, are you?” Sito interrupted. “You knew about Cree. You knew about Tyffial. I never mentioned either of them to you. So, you’re not Lucien, but you’re not just some innocent bystander who just <em> happens </em>to be wearing his face.”</p><p>“It’s <em> my </em>face,” Molly snapped. “I personalised it and everything.”</p><p>He was going to personalise it <em> more </em> after this. Maybe grow his hair out even longer, see if he could get it long enough to braid. Couple more tattoos, maybe, the next time they found somewhere with a decent tattooist. Not like he could just go to Desmond again, wherever he was now. Molly hoped he was all right. <em> Definitely </em>another few piercings. Maybe then he’d feel less like scratching his skin off at the reminder that it had been somebody else’s skin first.</p><p>Sito’s eyes narrowed. “So...what, it’s just all a grand coincidence? You’re going to claim you’re...what, his long-lost twin brother?”</p><p>“...I mean,” Nott put in helpfully. “He might be. It’s not like- You never knew your, uh, original family, right, Molly?”</p><p>Molly grabbed for the lifeline with both hands. “No, never. I was...sort of a foundling, grew up in the circus. No family I’ve ever heard of, but since I keep getting mistaken for this Lucien person…maybe it’s related.”</p><p>“Doesn’t explain the eyes.”</p><p>“Well…” Nott fumbled, when Molly’s brain was too busy screaming to help him come up with any coherent answer to that. “Do you- Do you know what they are? How- How this Lucien person got them? Maybe it’s a twin thing? I mean...Molly gets mistaken for this guy a <em> lot </em>, so…”</p><p>“It isn’t a twin thing. You had to <em> prove </em>yourself, to get the eyes.” Sito’s eyes narrowed, their shoulders hunching. “And Lucien didn’t have a twin, anyway. So, either you’re a very lazy impostor...or you’re him.”</p><p>There was really only one answer Molly could give to that.</p><p>“Very lazy impostor,” he said at once. “Definitely. Wouldn’t I know, if I were him? I mean, if I were, you probably wouldn’t have noticed that I wasn’t. Because I would be. Is this making any sense to you? I did have a point, at least, I think I did, but I seem to have mislaid it somewhere.”</p><p>“...no, not ‘specially.” Sito was eyeing Molly, now, with the wariness of an adventurer in an ancient tomb who couldn’t decide whether the artefact they were dealing with was a world-destroying weapon or a flowerpot, and didn’t think much of their chances of guessing right. “...the ritual,” they said slowly. “That city spell-slinger never said it could do this…”</p><p>“It couldn’t,” Molly said, too quickly, and realised his mistake too late. “I mean- What ritual?”</p><p>Sito fixed him with an unimpressed look.</p><p>“What about the Iron Shepherds?” Nila pressed. </p><p>Molly nearly jumped out of his skin. He didn’t know how it was that a seven-foot-tall firbolg could disappear so easily into the background that he’d half-forgotten she was standing there at all, but whatever talent it was, it was so deeply unfair that it left Molly spluttering.</p><p>“The-”</p><p>“You said there was something he should - or, Lucien, this person you are looking for...something he would know about where they are. What was it?”</p><p>Sito paused. “...I don’t like this,” they muttered. Molly didn’t know if it was meant for them to hear or whether Sito was just talking to themself. “Cree’d know what to do with this…”</p><p>Molly contemplated pointing out that, clearly, Cree <em> hadn’t </em>known what to do with this, or she’d have done it. But then, with Cree, he hadn’t known enough to overdo it. If he had a fault - a remote possibility, but Molly had to acknowledge it existed, after this mess - it was that he’d never known when to stop once he’d started on a story. It had tripped him up before, just...never for stakes like these.</p><p>On balance, maybe he shouldn’t point that out. It would mean reminding Sito that he knew where Cree was, and two cultists apart were trouble enough that Molly didn’t want to imagine how much worse two cultists together would be.</p><p>“We can- Can pay you?” Nott offered. “I mean...it doesn’t seem like you’re doing too great, and we’re- I mean, we’ve been paid a couple times already-”</p><p>“I don’t want your money.” Sito’s eyes were glittering now. “But I <em> do </em>want paid.”</p><p>Molly’s stomach clenched.</p><p>Nott blinked. “I mean...sure…” she said, sounding faintly confused now. “I mean...we can do that. Guess- Guess money isn’t always that much use up here, what with...everything? We can- Can do you a favour or something, maybe? If it means getting Caleb and- and Jester and the others back, then-”</p><p>“Yeah, there’s a favour you can do me.” Sito squared their shoulders. “It’s our old place. The Takers. The bastard Jagentoths took it off us after Lucien died. We’d scattered by then, couldn’t defend it, and without Lucien...well. He could put the fear into ‘em in a way none of the rest of us could even try to-”</p><p>Involuntarily, Molly shuddered.</p><p>“-but they don’t know everything about the place. There’s another way in. A tunnel. Comes out in the cellars. Pretty well-hidden, too. Not saying they mightn’t have found it, but…” Sito shrugged. “‘s a chance, at least. More of one than you’d have trying to storm the place from the outside.”</p><p>And one that might let them get the others out before it ever came to a fight.</p><p>It <em> would </em>come to a fight - there was no way for it not to, after everything the Shepherds had done. They all had too much skin in this to let it go for anything less. And, anyway, there was their compact with Keg to think of.</p><p>But if they could get the others out first...Molly didn’t know if they’d be in any fit state to fight. If they’d been fed, if any of them but Caleb were still alive, even. But if this were true...they’d know it going in, and they would <em> get </em>in, unseen and unnoticed, and maybe without any chance of further losses on the way.</p><p>Or they’d all die alone in the dark underground because Sito had double-crossed them or because the Shepherds <em> had </em>found the tunnel and were bright enough to either block the tunnel up at their end, or booby-trap it to the hells and back to make sure anyone who tried coming in that way didn’t live to regret it. Or they’d come out the other end and find themselves already locked in a cell. That was an option too.</p><p>“...okay,” Nott was saying now, sounding every bit as doubtful as Molly felt. That should be a good thing. It should mean he had an ally. Somehow, it didn’t feel that way. “Okay, so- So what would you want, in exchange for- for showing us that? We can- I mean, we’d be happy to split the loot once we’ve cleared the place out, but it doesn’t sound like-”</p><p>“Him.” Sito jerked their chin at Molly. “I’ll help you get your people back, if you’ll give back one of ours. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’d know Lucien anywhere, and that...it’s not him, but it ought to be. Maybe Tyffial will know what to do about that, if Cree didn’t, or maybe we’ll have to keep looking. But he’s meant for greater things than...whatever it is you’re doing.”</p><p>“Beg to differ,” Molly snapped.</p><p>Nott, though, looked conflicted. “Molly,” she said quietly. “Molly, it might- I mean, I know you aren’t...that you don’t want to, but...it’s better than- You know what the Shepherds are going to do to them if we don’t-”</p><p>“What are you going to do with him?” Nila interrupted, in that way of hers that sounded only slightly curious on the surface, but had depths that would drag you under if you put a foot wrong.</p><p>Sito grunted. “Bring him back to himself. Or try to. He was our leader first. It’s what he’d want, if he was in his right mind-”<br/>“Oh, fuck entirely off with that!” It was <em> his </em> mind. The only one he had. Just because it wasn’t Lucien’s didn’t make it <em> wrong </em> . And don’t think that Molly hadn’t noticed that choice of words. ‘Leader’, not ‘friend’. Even Cree had sounded a bit surprised at the idea of Lucien having - not other friends, but friends <em> at all </em>.</p><p>“Do we- Do we have to decide right now?” Nott asked. “I mean...can we...Message a friend, or…?”</p><p>Sito paused. “...no offence, but I’d rather not give you the chance to run for it.”</p><p>“Run where?” Nott retorted. “We’re still...we’re sort of stuck here, remember? We can’t just leave them, and without help, we can’t get in.”</p><p>“We don’t know that yet,” Molly reminded her, keeping one wary eye on Sito.</p><p>Even so...no Caleb meant that they couldn’t use Frumpkin’s eyes, even though the owl had still been with them before they entered the brothel. No Yasha meant they had lost their best fighter, and Beau and Molly could only barely make up the difference. No Jester meant that if any of them got hurt or killed then...that was it.</p><p>Between them, Caleb, Yasha, Jester and Fjord could probably have managed a rescue. Throw in Keg and Nila and it was more-or-less certain. Molly wasn’t sure the rest of them could do it, on their own.</p><p>“I mean,” Sito put in. “This is the fairest offer you’re going to get. Let me take him, and I’ll help you get your friends back. Or don’t, and I’ll take him anyway and you won’t get your friends back. Seems like a pretty simple choice to me.”</p><p>Put like that, there was really only one thing to do.<br/>“Fine,” Molly spat, hating Sito, and himself, and Nott, a little, for the desperate relief on her face. “Fine. I’ll do it.”</p><p>He could, he thought, be excused for missing most of what came next.</p><p>Somehow, they got out of the room without Molly getting dragged off for Sito to do...whatever it was that Sito was planning to do to him. For now, anyway. Which was good, Molly wasn’t complaining, it was definitely better than the alternative.</p><p>Beau and Keg’s room was a bit further down the corridor, and Molly, for one, had absolutely no compunctions about ignoring the noises from inside to hammer on the door and yelling at them to put their clothes back on, they’d found trouble.</p><p>The door flew open so hard it bounced off the wall, and there was Beau, wearing a tunic that was too wide across the shoulders and barely long enough to hit mid-thigh on her. So, probably Keg’s. She didn’t seem to have remembered to put on pants. Behind her shoulder, Keg was pinning a breastband into place, and very pointedly not looking at the door.</p><p>“This had better be fucking worth it, Molly!”</p><p>“Trust me,” Molly said breathlessly. “It’s worth it. Can we come in?”</p><p>“What- Uh- Now?”</p><p>“No, tomorrow!”</p><p>“Ugh- Fine. You didn’t need to be a smartass about it-”</p><p>“I <em> always </em>need to be a smartass about it,” Molly retorted, with a shaky approximation of his usual carelessness. “You’re going to want to hear this.”</p><p>It took a while to get through the whole story, between him and Nott and Nila, and it was made longer by the need to explain to Nila what, exactly, was going on and why this was such a nightmare.</p><p>“You’re not actually going to-” Beau started, once they’d got to the end.</p><p>“<em> Obviously </em> I’m not fucking doing it, noble self-sacrifice isn't anything I ever signed up for!” Molly snapped, throwing up his hands. “We’re definitely using them, but I’m not paying with my own fucking <em> mind</em>!” His voice cracked on the last word, horribly, and he shut his eyes, trying desperately to get ahold of himself again. This was worse than Cree had been. Cree, at least, hadn’t been that hard to put off. Shit.</p><p>Beau nodded. “Okay, so what’re we gonna do with this guy? I mean...if he knows another way into this place, that’s- that’s good, right?”</p><p>“We’re all just...ignoring the elephant in the room here?” Keg asked, squinting around at them.</p><p>Molly blinked back at her. That only seemed to annoy Keg more.</p><p>“The Tomb Takers? Look, I wasn’t- No-one could say I was <em> that </em> big a deal, and- nor were they, really. I mean, not on the level of the Marduns or the Jagentoths, but...you <em> heard </em>things about those guys.”</p><p>Molly’s stomach twisted.</p><p>“What kind of things?” Nott asked, frowning.</p><p>Keg rubbed a hand over her face. “Mostly just...rumours. Don’t know how much of it was true or anything, but...these were <em> not </em>people with whom you wanted to fuck.”</p><p>“We’re only dealing with one of them,” Beau reminded her.</p><p>“Two.” Keg was staring at Molly again, and for the first time, she looked almost afraid. “Shit. Fuck. I mean...I heard their leader was a purple tiefling, but...well, what were the odds? I mean...there’s lots of purple tieflings out there, I didn’t figure you’d be the same one-”</p><p>“I’m not!” Molly said, panic making him nearly shrill. “I’m- I don’t want to know <em> anything </em> about him. Look- Whatever came before, <em> I’m </em> here now. And all <em> I </em> want to know about the Tomb Takers is how to get away from <em> that </em>one once this is all over.”</p><p>“It might not be all bad,” Nott said hopefully, staring at him with what had probably been intended to be a big-eyed, appealing look. It didn’t suit her. Her great, bulbous golden eyes looked more like they were about to pop out than anything, and that wasn’t a look likely to persuade anyone of anything. “I mean...we don’t know that it’s that bad…”</p><p>“I’m not exactly in a hurry to find out,” Molly retorted. Not this again.</p><p>It wasn’t as if they’d talked about it, but Nott...Nott seemed to think that Lucien’s past was something Molly needed, and it wasn’t. Even Sito had known that Molly wasn’t him, and that was just the way Molly liked it. He’d heard little enough about Lucien, and none of it, even the parts said by people who’d actually <em> liked </em>the bastard, was anything he wanted any part of.</p><p>“Yeah, this sounds shady,” Beau agreed, and grimaced. Apparently she didn’t like the taste of agreeing with Molly any better than Molly liked agreeing with her. “We’ve still got to speak to these Marduns. Maybe they’ll give us a few other options.”</p><p>“I did not like that person.” Nila’s ears had gone back. “If they try to take you, I will bring down lightning on them, too,” she added, looking over at Molly.</p><p>“...thank you.”</p><p>They really <em> were </em>going to have to compare fortune-telling methods, when all this was over. Or before then, since it seemed like the Nein would be getting out of town in a hurry once they were all back together again.</p><p>“Yeah, no-one’s taking any of ours anywhere they don’t want to go,” Beau said, crossing her arms tight across her chest. “Not again. So...any idea how dangerous this guy is, or…?”</p><p>“If it’s a Tomb Taker?” Keg scrubbed a hand across her face. “I don’t know. As dangerous as Lorenzo. Worse, maybe. I don’t know. They kept to themselves, mostly. Travelled a lot. No-one went near their hideout while they were away, though - even when the Jagentoths took it, they had to be pretty sure no-one was coming back. They could...it’s just stories, I never saw- But you did <em> not </em>want to see what they did with people who got on the wrong side of them.”</p><p>Molly wished he wasn’t hearing this. More than anything. He wished they’d left well enough alone, told the Gentleman thanks, but no thanks, and found some other place to run after leaving Zadash. Tal’dorei, maybe. He’d heard good things about Tal’dorei.</p><p>Too late for that now.</p><p>They took most of the rest of the evening to come up with a workable plan. Well, most of one. Half of one. Enough of one to get by on, at least. Without knowing what they were going to find in the Sour Nest, there was only so much they could account for, and Beau was the only one of them left who was much of a planner anyway - Molly tended to get distracted after making all the preparations and then wander off to do something else instead.</p><p>It was harder, to go back to the room they’d booked for the night, not knowing if Sito would still be there or not. Harder still to go to sleep, even with the windows shuttered and as thoroughly barred as they could manage, and the bed - the heaviest piece of furniture they could find, made heavier by the three of them all crowding into it - jammed up against the door. It was warm, at least - Nila gave off heat like a large, fuzzy furnace, and would apparently cuddle anyone or anything that slept close enough to let her, even with one of Molly’s horns poking her in the cheek - but still, Molly couldn’t sleep. He stared up at the carved beams overhead, where someone had taken the trouble to embellish the heavy logs with mermaids and krakens and other watery-looking beasts that Molly couldn’t name but could more-or-less guess were bad news, based on sheer number of teeth.</p><p>He could barely feel Caleb now. Or- No. He could feel Caleb, like the brush of a shoulder against his own, when blinded by heavy fog. So faint he could almost have imagined that moment’s flush of warmth, but there, nonetheless, making himself known in every twinge of phantom pain that ran down Molly’s arms from shoulder to wrist. Alive, still. Not unharmed, but alive.</p><p>Had the others been as lucky? If you could call survival under those circumstances luck? He didn’t know, and couldn’t guess.</p><p>Two hours northeast. Five miles, maybe a little more. He almost felt he could get up and walk it. Through the Run and out into the Savaliirwood...it was hard to tell when that drowsy imagining slipped into true dreaming, of a wood of twisted trees, with eyes staring balefully down from every side, red as flame, as Molly’s own eyes, the ones on his face and on his skin both, and Molly hid in a thorn thicket to keep their gaze from falling on him. He had to find Frumpkin, Frumpkin would lead him out...where was he? There was no sign of the cat between the trees, no shadow of an owl in the branches, and when Molly woke, it was with a scream caught in his throat and a line of phantom fire trailing down his side.</p><p>He could feel the burn even second-hand, enough to make his fingers twitch and his tail curl in on itself in agony. Lorenzo, it seemed, had a sense of irony.</p><p>It was what Lorenzo had said himself. <em> He just volunteered to die for you. Let’s see if you’ll do the same. </em></p><p>What would he do if Molly didn’t? Caleb wasn’t- He wasn’t like Yash, or Fjord, or Jester. If physical strength was what the Shepherds were after, then Caleb’s only use to them was - it made his stomach twist to think it - <em> entertainment value </em>. The entertainment of hurting him, and watching his injuries disappear as Molly took them on.</p><p>What would happen, if they didn’t get it?</p><p>They could reach the Sour Nest today, but would that be soon enough, if Caleb ceased to be interesting?</p><p>The next burn fell down across the line of his back - what were they using? It wasn’t as though Molly was an expert. Caleb might know, he thought, trying not to dwell on how and why. If it had been Molly in Caleb’s place, Caleb <em> would </em>know. Not like Molly, who could only remember the vague hints from Desmond’s stories, with something uneasy churning in the pit of his stomach.</p><p>There was another, longer pause after that one, as if Lorenzo was giving Molly time to feel it- Giving <em> Caleb </em> time to feel it, rather. Caleb- Something, in all that grey mist, stirred. It was an uneasy feeling, and Molly couldn’t place it. It wasn’t something <em> he </em>had ever felt at all, except perhaps in those earliest days of consciousness, before the circus found him, the ones he could only half-remember.</p><p>Caleb- Caleb was coming out of it, at last. Molly didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad one.</p><p>He’d nearly killed himself, for Molly. Molly could take a few burns for him. It was the sort of transactional thinking Caleb did. Probably he’d expect it.</p><p>It was almost instinctive, in the end, to reach through the bond, find the place where Caleb was, and <em> pull </em>.</p><p>He bit down hard on his wrist as his skin <em> blistered </em>, pain spreading across the lines of fire painted down his side and across his back, so that even the light brush of linen against skin was agony, and even biting down hard enough to draw blood wasn’t enough to entirely silence the noise he made. There was a faint, echoing feeling of...something...from the other end of the bond. Molly reached for it blindly, wanting that reassurance that it had taken, but soon enough the grey mists closed again, and he knew no more.</p><p>Outside, the sky above Shadycreek Run was nearer red than black, stained by the smoke of a thousand cookfires, and Molly could hear shouting in the street below them - not the raucous, friendly shouting of a festival or the more enjoyable kind of barfight, but something altogether more menacing. The sort of shouting, in short, that tended...Hm. That you tended to hear when someone was coming with an angry mob to drive the circus out.</p><p>Another phantom line of fire lashed across his shoulder, and this time, Molly couldn’t suppress a pained gasping sound that would’ve been a shriek if he could catch the breath to do it. Blindly, he fumbled in his pack, looking for the pouch Jumnda had given them back at the Guitao clan’s village, feeling more blisters rising now, apparently almost at random, as that tongue of flame was drawn across Caleb’s belly, his back, the backs of his thighs. All Molly could do was stuff his other hand in his mouth and take it, helpless, until his fingers closed on the pouch.</p><p>It had been meant for all of them, but- Well, he wouldn’t take much. Just a pinch would do it, probably. Just enough to dull the pain and get him fit for fighting again - he didn’t need to be in <em> perfect </em>health for that. Just good enough that he’d be able to carve Lorenzo into enough pieces that they could pass him off as a parcel of dog-meat, if they found a dog they hated enough to risk poisoning it like that.</p><p>“Molly? Molly, are you-” Molly heard Nott hiss from over by the bed, and then a choky little gasp. “...Molly? What- Did- Did something- I don’t even know what could’ve-”</p><p>“Lorenzo,” Molly gritted out. Another lick of flame. When was he going to <em> stop </em> ? <br/>When Molly was dead, maybe. Or when Lorenzo felt he <em> should </em>be. He had to know he had their only healer captive. How long was he going to take about it?</p><p>“Molly, you don’t look good-”</p><p>Molly shook his head. At some point, his legs had gone out from under him. Probably the first time one of them had been burned. Molly had always thought he had a pretty good tolerance for pain, but this-</p><p>Normally, his scars healed up fast and stopped healing about as quickly. He’d got pretty cut up before, in some bad fights with the circus before Jester and her healing spells, but this wasn’t anything like that.</p><p>The bag, he’d lost his grip on the bag-</p><p>He scrabbled for it. Hardly any spilled. His hands were shaking almost too hard to crumble the moss between his fingers, but somehow he managed it, and then-</p><p>It didn’t stop the pain. Not all at once, at least. But it faded, slowly, into first a dull ache and then something like the persistent itch of a healing scab.</p><p>“Molly?”</p><p>He looked up. Nott was standing over him - actually over him, which was about when he realised that, at some point during the whole proceeding, he’d ended up half-sprawled on the floor.</p><p>“...yeah?”</p><p>“Did you…” Nott was chewing on her lip now. “You said- Lorenzo was doing it to you? Do you- You remember that?”</p><p>Molly nodded, and grimaced, sticking out his tongue. The moss had left a bitter aftertaste that was almost enough to make him wish for the burns back. Almost.</p><p>“Then he’s...I mean, is this just something he can do, or...or did you?”</p><p>Molly looked away. “I mean...we’ve got this,” he held up the pouch. “I think I’ll be hanging onto it for the foreseeable future, if that’s all right with everyone.”</p><p>“No, sure, that’s...that’s fine,” Nott said hurriedly, almost tripping over herself in her enthusiasm. “More than fine, I just...is he okay?”</p><p>Molly paused. “...I mean. He’s being tortured by slavers in a fortress,” he said awkwardly. “But I- I think I took the brunt of it.”</p><p>It was still going on, now. He could feel the shadow of the burns now. None on his front - if any of these burns messed up Molly’s tattoos, he was going to bring such torments on the Iron Shepherds that, if they were remembered at all, it would be for what Molly did to them.</p><p>Honestly, he was considering doing that anyway, but it was better if it was just for the tattoos. The tattoos were something he could think about.</p><p>“But he’s- he’s alive? Obviously he’s alive, you wouldn’t be…” Nott waved a hand. “...if he weren’t, but…”</p><p>“He’s alive,” Molly confirmed, and took out another pinch of moss as the burns bloomed white across his skin. He could barely feel them, now. Probably that wasn’t a good sign.</p><p>“...oh. Good. That’s good.”</p><p>Nott had a better view of the burns than Molly did, probably. She had to know what they were doing to him. If she had anything to say about it, though, she didn’t say it to Molly.</p><p>And, just in case his morning hadn’t been painful enough already, of course Sito was waiting for them down in the common room of the inn, as if they’d been sitting up all night to try and catch them sneaking off in the dark. Not that Molly could say the thought hadn’t occurred to him.</p><p>“So. You’re all in?” Sito asked, once they were all there, speaking in an undertone, to avoid the ears of the skinny ginger half-elf at the bar.</p><p>“We’re in,” Beau said flatly. “So. Sito, is it?”</p><p>“...sure, let’s go with that.” Sito’s eyes lingered on Molly. Molly wished they wouldn’t. There was something very unnerving about the way those eyes looked straight through him, without ever seeing him at all. “So. The Sour Nest. Not what we called it, but the Jagentoths were always a pretentious lot. Tunnel comes out in the Savaliirwood. It was meant as a last-ditch escape route if we ever came up against anything we couldn’t handle.”</p><p>“How well-hidden is it?” Beau asked, eyeing Sito suspiciously.</p><p>Sito shrugged. “Well enough it took us longer’n two years to find it. ‘S not the only way in, either, but it’s the only one they might not’ve blocked. You’re new here, so maybe you haven’t noticed, but someone digs a cellar in the Run, someone else’ll dig a tunnel into it. Harder to do, at the fortress, but hunger has a way of concentrating people’s minds.”</p><p>“Right.” Beau crossed her arms. “We’ll use it. But you’re coming with us, and you’re going in first. With one of us right behind you, and if you fuck us, we’re gonna make sure you don’t fucking live to tell the tale.”</p><p>Sito gave an acknowledging sort of low noise, halfway between a hum and a grunt. </p><p>“Suits me. So. We’re going now?”</p><p>Beau shot a look around at the rest of them. “Not...right now. We’ve, uh, we’ve got some other people to look up first. Technically we’re still working for this lady, uh-”</p><p>“Ophelia Mardun,” Molly supplied.</p><p>Sito gave a strangled, gargling sort of laugh. “You’re taking <em> him </em>to the Marduns’ place?”</p><p>Beau froze.</p><p>“...uh. Yeah. Is there some kind of problem with that that we don’t know about?”</p><p>Sito grinned. It was the sort of grin, Molly thought, more usually seen heading towards drowning sailors, at speed, and with a fin on top.<br/>“No, no, not a problem, exactly. I mean, she’ll probably want his head on a pike for the thing with the ceremonial bowl, but that was years ago. Maybe she’s forgotten about it by now.”</p><p>Molly was not going to ask what ‘the thing with the ceremonial bowl’ had been, and if anyone else tried it, he was going to have to resort to violence.</p><p>“...this ceremonial bowl…” Beau started.</p><p>“Is of no possible interest to us and really isn’t any of our business,” Molly interrupted. </p><p>“Was it...uh...dragony-looking, by any chance?” Beau pushed.</p><p>Molly stopped. He hadn’t- He hadn’t considered that, actually.</p><p>Sito put their head on one side. “...dragony? Uh- No, not as I recall. It was, uh...important. Just...ritualistically. Could’ve used any artefact old enough, really.”</p><p>That...wasn’t all that reassuring.</p><p>“Right. Uh. Molly, do you want to-”</p><p>Molly was not being left behind with Sito. The halfling gave him the creeps. It didn’t seem that they had anything else to give. And there was too high a risk of them knocking Molly over the head and dragging him away while the others weren’t there to help him.</p><p>“Can Nott...uh, can you disguise other people with that spell of yours?” he asked Nott, without much hope.</p><p>Nott was already shaking her head.</p><p>“...I suppose I can’t just hang around at the back of the group, wearing a hooded cloak and not talking much?”</p><p>“You sure you can manage that?” Beau asked, squinting at him.</p><p>Molly blinked. “Manage what?”</p><p>“Not talking much.”</p><p>Molly glowered at her over the breakfast-plates.</p><p>“I’ll be stealing your cloak, then,” he decided, just to be petty, and because...well, for whatever reason, people had decided ‘purple tiefling in a black cloak’ meant ‘Lucien’, even though there had to be any number of purple tieflings out there, and dark cloaks were disproportionately popular for how bloody boring they were as outerwear. He hadn’t even put his hood down for people to notice he had the same face, and <em> still </em> people kept figuring it out. Or just jumping to wild assumptions because they’d only ever seen one purple tiefling before in their lives, so <em> of course </em> he had to be the same one.</p><p>It would be a lot easier to resent that if they hadn’t turned out to be halfway right.</p><p>If they’d been hoping that whatever grudge the Marduns had against the Tomb Takers would mean that Sito would stay behind for that part - Molly knew <em> he </em>certainly had been - they were disappointed. Apparently, Sito didn’t trust them not to run off on them any more than they trusted Sito not to take what he wanted and run. If what they wanted had been anything less than Molly’s whole mind, Molly might even have thought it was worth letting them have it just to get rid of them.</p><p>Instead, Sito kept pace with them all the way to the edge of the woods, where it turned out that, despite whatever grudges there might be, Sito was the only one of them who knew where the Marduns’ place actually <em> was </em>, a little way northwest, just on the edge of the forest.</p><p>The forest itself was unnerving enough. Molly...Molly remembered this, he thought. The twisted trees, a world of greys and purples and not a hint of green, and all around him the sickly, pervasive smell of decay. He didn’t...he remembered it being frightening, but that- He’d thought that was just...how he remembered it. Just another part of the over-bright, too-significant haze of his first few days of life, before he stumbled out of the trees and into the lights of the carnival. Apparently he’d got it the wrong way round - his memories hadn’t painted this place creepy <em> enough </em>.</p><p>Nila didn’t seem to like it here either, which was even more worrying so far as Molly was concerned - it wasn’t as though forests were something he’d seen that many of either, at least, not from the inside, since it was just about impossible to get a waggon train through them and so the circus had usually given them a pretty wide berth. Nila, on the other hand, knew enough to be able to say for sure that things were actually <em> wrong </em> , beyond Molly’s vague sense that something in all of this just felt spooky. If <em> she </em>was worried, probably they should all be.</p><p>You really had to wonder what the Marduns were doing, living this close to it. You couldn’t have <em> paid </em>Molly to do the same.</p><p>The Estate Sybaritic looked...pretty much like any petty country noble’s manor, really. Molly had seen a lot of those, in two years, since these people usually owned most of the ‘common’ land the circus had set up on, and it was always a good idea to make sure you weren’t at risk of being run off with dogs before pitching tents and starting to advertise. Even the faint-but-definite signs of disrepair weren’t more than Molly had seen in any number of places, local landowners trying to keep up the appearance of extravagant wealth and succeeding only in demonstrating that they were richer than everyone else in town and that still wasn’t enough for them.</p><p>In any one of those little villages, a place like this would’ve been unremarkable. Here, it stuck out like a swan in a flock of starving chickens. Built in wood, not stone, beyond a single spike-topped wall around the compound. A fine reddish wood that must’ve cost a fortune to bring this far north, since nothing seemed to grow here that wasn’t that same sickly grey-purple. Even the rose garden here, its blooms already gone this late in the year but the bushes still thriving, was grey and underlaid with the same rotting sweetness as the wood outside. The woods pressed right up against the walls, trees leaning over and trailing their long limbs. Give it another few years, and the place would be overrun entirely, assuming they weren’t hiring an army of gardeners to keep the woods back from their gates. Molly had been scamming people in houses like this since before he’d remembered how to talk, but he had to admit, the giant eldritch forest was new. The heavies in chain mail weren’t, admittedly, but normally they at least tried to pretend they were something other than thugs in good armour.</p><p>Sito stopped just at the edge of the trees, eyeing the guards warily.</p><p>“I, uh. I think I’ll stay back here, if it’s all the same to you folks. He probably should too,” they added, jerking their head at Molly.</p><p>Molly tugged his hood a little further over his face.</p><p>“<em> He </em> can make his own decisions, thank you,” he said acidly. “And <em> he </em>doesn’t want to be left out.”</p><p>Sito grunted, their eyes drawing away from the shadows of Molly’s face like they were flinching back from touching an open wound. “If he dies, I want the corpse,” they said shortly. “Cree’ll know what to do with it.”</p><p>That...really didn’t bode well for what they wanted with Molly alive. Of course, no answer to that question was ever going to be <em> good </em>news, but this was, if anything, even worse than Molly had been expecting. Alive, at least, he could try and make a run for it.</p><p>Beau made a noise in her throat that sounded like she was trying not to yell, and succeeding only because she couldn’t decide what it was she wanted to snarl about first. Molly...was not touched by that. At all. It was not in the least bit endearing and there was absolutely nothing warm about the feeling in Molly’s chest.</p><p>...okay, perhaps a little. Only in the same way he sometimes got about Ornna, on the rare occasions she’d stuck up for him, back with the carnival, because he was one of the circus, so they were the only ones who could mess with him.</p><p>Come to think of it, Ornna hadn’t been nearly as much fun to tease, but that was something Molly could think about later.</p><p>They left Sito at the edge of the woods, and if a monster came out of nowhere to eat them, Molly really wasn’t sure he’d feel that sorry about it, apart from losing that tunnel they’d promised. Maybe not even then. He still wasn’t completely sure he believed Sito’s reassurances about how unlikely it was that the Iron Shepherds had found and trapped that tunnel, for one thing.</p><p>The heavies out front looked around as they approached, crossbows at the ready, not quite pointed at the Nein, but held in a position that suggested they could be, if they weren’t pretty quick about explaining who they were and what they were doing here.</p><p>Beau looked around at the rest of them, seemed to realise that she was the only one with any social skills other than Molly, who was apparently in danger of losing his head if he made himself too noticeable, and huffed out a breath.</p><p>“Hey. Uh...how’s it going?”</p><p>“...fine.” The guard actually sounded faintly confused. Guards tended to, for some reason. Then again, it wasn’t a job that required much imagination. Or much socialising that didn’t involve jabbing a crossbow at someone’s back and telling them to mark. Probably they’d gone off-script again. “What is your intent here?”</p><p>“We’ve got a message for, uh, Ophelia Mardun. A...uh...gentleman down south, who is prepared to offer many gifts, and wanted to be remembered to her.”</p><p>“What is your message?”</p><p>Beau shifted. “Yeah, we’re gonna need to tell her that. It’s...kinda sensitive, you know. For her ears only. And we were...led to expect there’d be more work for us, once we delivered it.”</p><p>The guard grunted. “I’ll tell her that you’re here. You'll be summoned if necessary, but, ah…” he trailed off. Molly really, really hoped this wasn’t the sort of trailing off which meant ‘if you’re still here when I get back, you’re going to be horsewhipped’. He’d only been threatened with that one time, but it had been...pretty memorable.</p><p>The guard’s accent sounded a little - a very little - like Caleb’s, he noticed, and then wished he hadn’t.</p><p>It looked like that <em> had </em> been the ominous kind of trailing off, because at a signal from the first guard, his companion, who’d been leaning against a wall eating some kind of jerky or trail rations out of a pouch, straightened up and nocked an arrow, though he hadn’t drawn the bow yet, which meant they <em> probably </em>weren’t about to get shot. At another whistle, the doors to the estate proper opened, and three more heavies with crossbows trooped out. </p><p>That was new. Then again, in a place like this, there really was nothing stopping the people of Shadycreek Run from realising that they could just come in and <em> take </em>all this, if they wanted, and if they could form up into a big enough mob.</p><p>...then again, most people were not keen on being the people at the front of said mobs, especially not when the defenders had crossbows and the mob did not.</p><p>So far as he could tell, though, right now the defenders were mostly just looking intimidating for the sake of impressing visitors. Or maybe had just concluded that, if this was an angry mob, it was a small and harmless one. Molly huddled a little deeper into Beau’s borrowed cloak, coiling his tail defensively around his thigh and wishing he’d thought to borrow a pair of gloves as well, if anyone had them. Hiding his hands under the cloak could only do much, and if anyone asked him to do anything that would require the use of them, he was sunk.</p><p>For now, though, all that seemed to be required of them was to kick their heels under the gimlet-eyed stare of this matched set of well-armed thugs.</p><p>“So,” Keg was saying, “How do you like being guards?”</p><p>Molly almost wanted to join in, but-</p><p>But all it had taken was the sight of purple hands and a dark cloak, and Sito had been certain enough it was Lucien to ambush them at the Landlocked Lady. But these people had hated Lucien, and no-one who had known the bastard seemed willing to accept that Molly was not and had no desire to be the same person. But if they offended the Marduns, even if they survived it, they could kiss goodbye to their payroll and their best hope of more help to get the others out.</p><p>He swallowed, tasting bile, and wished Nott’s disguise spell worked on people other than her.</p><p>It took another few minutes for the first guard to come back.</p><p>“All right, stand down.” </p><p>It wasn’t <em> terribly </em> reassuring, how disappointed all the guards looked to hear that, but on the other hand, they <em> did </em>lower their crossbows, so...Molly would take it.</p><p>The gates were opened, and the guards formed up around them like a pack of sheepdogs. With crossbows. The crossbows were rather concentrating Molly’s mind, right now. He wanted to roll his shoulders and see if that would work out some of the ache in them, even knowing that it wasn’t <em> his </em>shoulders, really, that were aching, and that doing it might catch him a crossbow bolt between the shoulder-blades.</p><p>There was a courtyard, beyond the gate, full of winter greenery touched only faintly with the grey rot of the woods. They were hustled through that at a fair clip, up a short flight of stairs and into the house.</p><p>There was no scent of decay at all here - or, if there was, it was faint enough that Molly could ignore it in favour of the smells of cooking meat, of butter and fresh bread and something faintly herbal. There was carpet underfoot, in a dark enough red that, should they all be shot to ribbons here and now, the stain probably wouldn’t show up too badly, which showed admirable, if worrying, foresight. A wide, shallow staircase wound its way up three sides of the room, opening onto a sort of gallery with a wide window, through which the grey-purple expanse of the forest could be seen, just in case the occupants wanted to get into a staring match with their inevitable, encroaching doom.</p><p>All in all, Molly would call it a fairly standard Imperial minor bigwig’s house, transplanted into an area which should not have standard Imperial minor bigwigs.</p><p>There was a sound of footsteps from an upper level, and a tiefling woman, with charcoal skin, bright yellow eyes and hair so long it was a wonder she didn’t trip on it going downstairs, rounded the corner.</p><p>This, Molly presumed, was Ophelia Mardun.</p><p>The sensible thing to do, if he didn’t want to die, would be to make himself as inconspicuous as it was possible for a mysterious cloaked figure to be. Unfortunately, that already seemed to be something of a lost cause, as he could feel Ophelia Mardun’s eyes linger on him. He couldn’t even blame her for it. Cloaked and hooded figures were almost as conspicuous as devilishly handsome purple tieflings. But between Ophelia or Sito, he’d take Ophelia. At least the worst <em> she </em>could do to him was kill him.</p><p>...he hoped.</p><p>“So, you bring tidings from the Gentleman, you say?” she asked. She had the same sort of almost-Zemnian accent as her guards, a little less thick, but enough to make something twinge with pain in Molly’s chest.</p><p>It took a moment to realise that...wasn’t just the accent.</p><p>The Shepherds had begun their work again, and Molly could feel the wetness soaking through his shirt. A knife, this time, not a brand. He didn’t know if that could be counted an improvement or not, but Molly got cut up all the time. He could handle a bit more of it, just until he got outside again.</p><p>Up in front of him, Beau lifted her chin. “If you’re Ophelia Mardun, we do.”</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>Ophelia’s smile was sharp, and her chin jerked up too in answer to Beau’s, as if they were trying to compete to see who could bare their throat more effectively for the knife and that was <em> not a comfortable thought for Molly to be having </em>.</p><p>“Good move, making sure,” Nott hissed, loud enough for Molly to hear it, and so probably loud enough for Ophelia and all her guards to hear it too.</p><p>Ophelia nodded. “Thorough. I appreciate that. Very well. You have invoked the name of my comrade. You have my attention, do not squander it. Why are you here?”</p><p>Beau looked around, a little desperately, but since Molly was still attached to his head and would like to keep it that way, no help was forthcoming.</p><p>“We, uh, we were sent to help you? Our...employer...heard you were having some...uh...some difficulties, lately, and thought we might be able to help out.”</p><p>Ophelia gave another brisk little nod. “So. You are the health he sent. Timely. Three days earlier would have been better, but here we are. I shall not fret on it. Thank you for coming.” She looked over their heads to the guards behind them. “Be at ease. Go watch the back walls, make sure nobody else tries to sneak in while we are talking.”</p><p>That, at least, dispersed most of the gaggle of guards, except for the two at the back, who stood at either side of the door they’d come in by like the world’s most heavily-armed set of ornamental urns.</p><p>“How much have you been told?” Ophelia asked, returning her gaze to the rest of them.</p><p>There was, Molly reminded himself, absolutely no reason she should want him to take his hood off. All of them were shady in one way or another. Nott was wearing bandages, a hood and a mask that had been made out of a sizeable chunk of somebody’s china doll, and nobody had yet asked <em> her </em>to take any of them off. He’d be fine. Oh, gods, let him be fine.</p><p>Beau shrugged. “...honestly, next to nothing. Just that you were having trouble, and the Gentleman was willing to pay pretty handsomely for us to help.”</p><p>Ophelia’s eyes flicked over Beau, head to heels and back again.</p><p>“I’ve had...an open line of shipments to Zadash, through our...mutual friend...for some time, made a beneficial arrangement for many years. However, my most trusted team of smugglers that handle that route and knew it well were slain a little over a month ago.”</p><p>“Do you- Do you know by whom?” Nott asked, squinting up at her. Another line of pain streaked its way up Molly’s chest.</p><p>Ophelia gave an elegant sort of half-shrug. “Well, at first we thought it was maybe the dire beasts of the wood around us, but our internal priest was able to divine the source of their demise. In other words, at the hands of the Jagentoths.”</p><p>Nott blinked. “The who? What?”</p><p>“It’s the family that controls the Iron Shepherds,” Keg said in an undertone, hunching a little deeper into her own cloak.</p><p>“The Jagendoths?”</p><p>“The Jagentoths.”</p><p>“Now we’ve- As you seem to know this well…” Ophelia started, then stopped, her eyes falling on Keg. </p><p>Shit. Molly had been so busy worrying about what would happen if he was recognised as someone he wasn’t, he’d forgotten about the risk of Keg being recognised for who she was. Or at least, who she had been, a month and change ago. These things could change pretty quickly, Molly could say from experience. </p><p>“You look familiar. What is your name?”</p><p>Keg winced, closing her eyes. “Uh...Keg,” she admitted.</p><p>“Keg,” Ophelia repeated, barely more than a breath. “I know that name.”<br/>Keg gave a faint little shadow of a nod, her eyes flicking down. “I used to work for them. Not anymore.”</p><p>Behind them, Molly heard the distinct mechanical <em> ka-clonk </em>of a crossbow being cocked and levelled. Probably more than one crossbow, just going by the echoes.</p><p>Ophelia barely seemed to notice, but Molly wasn’t letting that fool him. One itchy trigger finger and they were down one more teammate.</p><p>“And what assurances can I have that I not need strike you down where you stand?”</p><p>Keg put up her hands.</p><p>“You don’t have any,” she admitted. “But I have a lot of information about them.”<br/>“We just killed one of them,” Nott put in, her eyes flicking nervously from Ophelia back, as if she was trying to look around at the guards with the crossbows but didn’t want to turn away from Ophelia to get a proper look.</p><p>Keg blinked. “Oh, that’s true. That’s better. We killed one of them.”</p><p>Ophelia paused, her lips going thin. “Intriguing. Very well.” She signalled to the guards, and the crossbows went down, though many remained cocked and loaded.</p><p>Honestly, from there, it was difficult to tell the difference between this and the sort of double-dealing you got in petty minor-noble houses in various villages all the way across the Empire. Molly had picked up pretty early on that, for Gustav, the fastest way to get a landowner to let the circus camp on their land was to imply that a neighbouring landowner had already done so, <em> but if your lands cannot support us, m’lord... </em> It always worked. It had looked like magic to Molly, the first few times, before he’d got the trick of it. The same sort of double-dealing seemed to be going on here, though with less passive-aggression and more knives. Right down to not wanting their fingerprints on it, even with no law to bother them if there were. Apparently the Grudge Gang and the Taskers were a big enough deal here to make trouble about feuding between the tribes all on their own. Probably there was more to it than that, but Molly...Molly’s head felt light. He hadn’t lost that much blood, he knew. He couldn’t have lost that much blood, or he wouldn’t still be standing. He’d be fine. He just needed to get out of this room, and he’d be able to have some more of Jumnda’s moss and he’d be <em> fine </em>.</p><p>All of which suited them perfectly, because the one thing they’d come to ask for help with was the one thing the Marduns wanted them to do. Ophelia ran through the situation briskly, telling them nothing Keg hadn’t already been able to fill them in on, then looked them over sceptically.</p><p>“-if you have other ideas, we are open to suggestions. Am I to believe that you have been sent as trained killers, able to deal with this?”<br/>Her eyes lingered on Nila - who was, it had to be said, not anyone’s idea of what a trained killer ought to look like - for a moment, and there was an edge of doubt in her voice.</p><p>Beau shrugged. “Best the Gentleman could offer,” she said insouciantly. “Picked up a few hangers-on on the road, but, uh, we’re all pretty capable.”</p><p>Ophelia’s eyebrows rose. “...well. We shall see. Let us hope that the priest was not incorrect. Either way, I would like to see them taken down a peg. So,” she finished, straightening a little further. “Do you accept this offer?”</p><p>Beau paused, and crossed her arms. “What all do you want us getting out of that house?”</p><p>Ophelia fixed her with a very level look, that did not suggest she thought very much of Beau’s intelligence.</p><p>“Nothing to get out of it. Kill everything within it.”</p><p>“Everything?” Molly asked, before he could stop himself. “They’ve been out on a slaving run lately. Might be survivors.”</p><p>There <em> were </em>survivors, he knew there was, at least one survivor, there would be at least one survivor so long as Molly held out.</p><p>Ophelia’s eyes fell on him now, and narrowed.</p><p>“...your voice is...familiar. It seems to me we may have met.”</p><p>Molly’s heart hammered in his chest, the multiplying cuts across his arms and chest throbbing in time to the beat of it, more blood draining away with every one.</p><p>“Shouldn’t think so,” he said, as carelessly as he could manage, trying to imitate Gustav’s accent, just a bit harder than he already was. “I haven’t been up here since I was...just a wee thing, really.”</p><p>“And yet you choose to hide your face.”</p><p>Molly shrugged, or tried to. Moving at all hurt, right now. “There’s a reason my parents moved south of here when I was young. Might still be a few people harbouring grudges hanging around, but it shouldn’t interfere too much with what you want from us.”<br/>“You will forgive me if I am unwilling to rely on your assurances.”</p><p>Ophelia was eyeing him again, weighing and measuring, and Molly knew, a second before she ordered it, what she was going to ask her men next.</p><p>“Guards! Remove our guest’s hood. I would see the face of the person I am dealing with.”</p><p>Molly could have fought them. He couldn’t have won. Not as he felt now - light-headed, with another line of white-hot agony searing its way across his clavicle. And even if he did...what would that get him but a crossbow bolt between the shoulder-blades, a fight for the others that, even if they won, would bring down even more trouble on them, and no escape at all for the others.</p><p>So, he did the only thing he could possibly do. </p><p>He put back his hood, and met Ophelia’s eyes squarely, and watched the blood drain from her face.</p><p>“<em> You </em>.”</p><p>“...oh, so we have met, then.”</p><p>Ophelia had gone the colour of slate. “You must have a death wish. Guards-”</p><p>The crossbows levelled.</p><p>“Wait!” Beau put up her hands. “Look, I know this looks bad-”</p><p>“Do you indeed?” Ophelia nearly hissed.</p><p>“-but, I promise, we can explain, Can we just...put the crossbows away? We’re all on the same side here, I promise.”</p><p>“I very much doubt that.” Ophelia’s eyes blazed, but her voice was controlled for all its sharpness. “Choose your next words carefully, Lucien. They may yet be your last.”</p><p>Put like that, there was really only one choice.</p><p>“...I’m not Lucien.”</p><p>Ophelia snorted. “You are certainly a worse liar than I remember-”</p><p>“No,” Nott spoke up. “He’s...he’s telling the truth. I mean...we’ve tested it? We did a, you know, a truth spell and everything…”</p><p>Ophelia’s brow arched up. “I find that difficult to believe.”</p><p>“Then do one yourself,” Beau spoke up roughly. “I- Look. I know it sounds...crazy, but we’re still the only help you’ve got against the Jagentoths, right? He dies, you don’t get any help from us, and the Gentleman’s probably going to be pissed that you killed some of his guys without his say-so, so you can’t ask for more. Where’s the harm in just...checking we’re who we say we are before you do anything? Not like you can’t just kill us all afterwards, if you don’t like the answers.”</p><p>“Do you imagine, little girl, that I would have any qualms about killing you all now?”</p><p>Beau paused. Molly watched as her throat worked through a swallow.</p><p>“...no, not really. But, like I said. Nothing to lose, and if we’re who we say we are, you still get the Jagentoths dealt with. Maybe point the finger at this Lucien guy. From, uh, from what we’ve heard of him, he’s got a few reasons to want these people out of his place.”</p><p>Ophelia’s eyes narrowed almost to slits. “You know of him. And yet you claim this-” A dismissive flick of the hand towards Molly. “-Is not him?”</p><p>“It’s a...a long story,” Molly admitted grudgingly. </p><p>“And one best told under a truth spell. I see.” Ophelia looked to the guards again. “Fetch Master Ronnel. Tell him, we will need a Zone of Truth prepared.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I am SO SORRY. I really did not intend to give you three cliffhangers in a row. Unfortunately, this just seemed like the most natural break point in the chapter, and I haven't finished the second half yet.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Not entirely pleased with this chapter, but at this point I'm so sick of it, and so desperate for attention, that I might as well publish it now and get on with the actually plot-relevant, difficult bits I've been putting off. Hopefully it passes muster anyway.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>If Molly had thought the first Zone of Truth incident had been bad, he was seeing the error of his ways now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not that he wanted to do that again, but at least the first time had happened in private, in the company of friends, without any crossbow bolts pointed at sensitive portions of his anatomy and in close enough proximity to alcohol that he could go and get a very stiff drink afterwards.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of those consolations were on offer, this time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It took a few minutes for a guard to return, with the Marduns’ household priest, a bland and smooth-faced human in plain blacks with no sign of a holy symbol. He did not seem especially surprised to be called in as an interrogator. Probably he had been asked to do this before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia had explained the situation briskly, and indicated Molly with a careless flick of the wrist. Not that the rest of them were being left out. They’d had to group up tight under a round dozen crossbows levelled at them - what the hell had Lucien </span>
  <em>
    <span>done</span>
  </em>
  <span>, to have the Marduns this twitchy? - so that the Zone of Truth could encompass them all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>None of them was about to fight back. It was far too clear what would happen to them if they did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll begin with something simple,” Ophelia said coolly, tipping up Molly’s chin with one long finger. “Who are you, and where have you come from?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly felt the compulsion creeping through him, even as another cut opened up on his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he gritted out. “The Fletching and Moondrop Travelling Carnival of Curiosities.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia’s eyebrows lifted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...is he resisting?” she asked, glancing over at the priest. “He had a- a talent for disrupting magic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No. I’d know if he had.” The priest was eyeing Molly now with an odd expression.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia nodded. “Then we will continue. Why, then, do you bear such a marked resemblance to the late, unlamented leader of the Tomb Takers?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I-” Molly’s throat tightened, and he swallowed. “I- I’m still not him,” he said, which was true, even if it wasn’t technically the answer. “I don’t...remember being him. A lot of people seem pretty keen to tell me I was, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia paused. “...clarify.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And so, by degrees, she dragged the story out of him, occasionally breaking off to ask a few clarifying questions of one of the others. How they had met him. If they had known Lucien, before Molly. Who they had encountered who had.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly couldn’t quite help hating the smile that slid across her face, when she heard what he’d been doing with himself since he woke up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“From gang leader to carnival barker?” she said, voice low and richly amused. “Do you know, I think I can see it. It would have been a better path for him. Always talking, talking and saying nothing…” Her eyes flicked over Molly. Her smile grew a little wider, more satisfied. “Not much seems to have changed, in that regard.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s skin </span>
  <em>
    <span>crawled</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He almost wished that he’d waited outside with Sito after all, except that he still didn’t trust the halfling not to try and drag him away the moment they had him alone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, you believe us?” Beau asked gruffly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia paused, a considering look passing over her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I believe you. Indeed, you have been...remarkably direct, under the circumstances. I believe that you believe it. And I cannot say it would not be worth a great deal to me, to see Lucien attempting to juggle…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let me up and give me my swords back, and I can demonstrate,” Molly said sourly. He was getting very tired about people talking about- it wasn’t even </span>
  <em>
    <span>him </span>
  </em>
  <span>they were talking about as if he wasn’t there, but somehow that didn’t make it any less infuriating.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia paused. “...I might ask why it was you volunteered for this,” she said after a moment. “If you already knew that you had come from Shadycreek Run, and if you were truly so desperate to avoid any unwelcome discoveries about the man you were. Why did you come here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “Well, we </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>getting paid. If I’d known we were going to run into this much trouble, I’d have voted for us to go south instead, but...hindsight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished, now, that he had. Or that they’d had the sense to just take the one job, gone south again from Hupperdook and thus missed the Iron Shepherds entirely. Maybe got out of the Empire entirely while they were at it, before anyone came poking around looking for the winning team from the Victory Pit in Zadash. They could’ve been on the road to the Menagerie Coast right now, Yasha and Fjord and Jester and Caleb and all, without any idea just how many crossbow bolts they’d dodged-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they weren’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Instead, they were here, being held at crossbow-point by a lot of guards at the say-so of some old enemy of Lucien’s who didn’t have a damn thing to do with Molly except that, for some reason, the Gentleman just kept digging these people up to make Molly’s life that bit more difficult. He probably didn’t even realise he was doing it. Either that or he had a very, </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>indirect way of making his grudges known.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It really was very depressing how many total strangers seemed to want Molly dead. Or worse than dead. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia’s lips thinned. “And what certainty may I have that you will not simply take your pay and anything else you might desire, and return south now that you have found the Run so inhospitable to you? You might not remember, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>certainly do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not just an arsehole but an idiot as well - hadn’t Lucien cared at all about ever finding work again? Or had he just thought he wouldn’t need it once he had whatever that ritual was supposed to do for him. It would probably be the usual cult trifecta - wealth, power, immortality. It was so painfully dull that even Molly was ashamed, and he’d been reliably informed he didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>have </span>
  </em>
  <span>a sense of shame, so that was working from a pretty severe deficit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” Beau said awkwardly. “They’ve, uh. They’ve got a few people. People who matter to us. His husband’s one of them, so...not about to run away south…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Congratulations.” Ophelia’s voice was entirely flat. “But I will require some better security than just your word. Lucien has never shown any difficulty in leaving his companions behind to die before.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even Nott looked a little sick at that, which almost made Molly feel better until he saw the little glance she stole at him, as if fucking Lucien and whatever it was he’d done had </span>
  <em>
    <span>anything </span>
  </em>
  <span>to do with him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t suppose you’ve got any idea what would work, as collateral?” he asked, trying desperately to sound just a bit less pissed-off and afraid and out of control of this whole situation than he actually was. “We’re...we don’t really have anything much to offer right now, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia was eyeing him again, as if he were some artefact that had been unearthed, and she hadn’t yet had a chance to call in someone to do Caleb’s Identify trick. And as if she was considering, now, whether it might be worth using him anyway. That was- That was good, in theory. At least, it meant she might not actually decide to have him tortured to death over...whatever it was Lucien had done to piss her off so much. If he could convince her that it would be a better revenge to leave him running around as he was, maybe he could get out of this with his skin intact.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not the first person I’ve met here who wants me dead,” he admitted baldly. “But since the other one seems to think me being dead is their first step to getting this Lucien person back, maybe you could consider leaving me alive long enough to get far enough away that it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth to bring him back afterwards?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly didn’t know what that would do. Whether that would work, even, or if there was some way to make sure they got the right person for whatever resurrection ritual it was that Sito was planning on having Cree do. He hadn’t even known Cree </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>resurrect people, and now he knew, dying held a whole new range of terrors for him that it never had before.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia paused. “...you met this person here? In Shadycreek? Who was it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau coughed. “Uh- Weaselly little halfling. Called themselves Sito. So tall, kinda pale, messy hair, uses a crossbow…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ah.” Ophelia paused. “Where are they now?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Outside,” Beau admitted, her face twisting as if she’d rather not admit that. “I, uh, don’t know exactly where, but...they said they knew a way into the Nest. Wanted Molly in exchange for it. If you hate this Lucien guy as much as it sounds like you do-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He was not worth my hatred.” Ophelia paused. “That is not to say that I would want him returned…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That makes two of us,” Molly said bitterly, casting a pointed look at Nott, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. “So, since we’ve both got an investment in him </span>
  <em>
    <span>staying gone</span>
  </em>
  <span>…can’t we work something out?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are you asking me for, if I might inquire?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You let us kill your enemies for you and go back to Zadash to get paid.” Molly paused, considered, then added. “...and if you could possibly see your way clear to getting Sito off our backs - well, my back, mostly, but since Lucien was such a nuisance to you, I figure you wouldn’t mind being rid of him either - I’d take it as a favour owed?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He essayed a smile, and if it was a little forced, he could attribute that to only </span>
  <em>
    <span>physical </span>
  </em>
  <span>pain. Those were, he thought, pretty generous terms, all told. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia’s lips thinned even further. “And if I simply kill you here and burn the body?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>made it sound like they’d need a body, now he thought about it. And if he could work that out, probably so could Ophelia.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you could do that,” he admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wouldn’t even lose her her help, since the Iron Shepherds still had the others, and none of the others was about to give up on that, even if Molly died here. Really, all it would mean would be that they might end up doing the job for free, which was just a bonus from Ophelia’s side of this whole negotiation.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Ophelia agreed silkily. “I could.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The priest cleared his throat. “If I may, Lady Ophelia...the body is no certainty. There are...certain spells which allow for a resurrection even without one, and given the...the nature of that person’s interests…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh. Yes. That was- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Thank you</span>
  </em>
  <span>, weird random priest. May whichever god it was he followed shower him with blessings in whatever forms he wanted to receive them. Alcohol, drugs and convivial company would be Molly’s blessing currency of choice, but some priests weren’t allowed that sort of thing, so...recipient’s choice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“When you say ‘interests’...” Nott asked, sounding dubious. Molly could have kicked her. Well, no, he couldn’t. But he’d never </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted </span>
  </em>
  <span>to more. “Was this...I mean, we had sort of heard he stole something from you, is that...related, or was there something else, or...?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia’s eyebrows rose again. “...what is it to you? If your companion is, as he said, determined to put the past behind him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was hard to miss the implication of what would happen if he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>so determined. Since Molly </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span>, it shouldn’t have been a problem, but of course Nott never could accept that. She’d even been willing to say</span>
  <em>
    <span> it wouldn’t be that bad </span>
  </em>
  <span>to let Sito have him, and that was-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly had...many, complicated feelings about that, none of which he wanted to examine all that closely, because if he let himself be angry about it now, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to stop. He liked Nott, most of the time. He’d like to be able to go on liking Nott, once all this was over and he could remember why it was he’d liked her in the first place.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was fumbling, now, under Ophelia’s eyes. “Well- Uh. It just...seems like the sort of thing we ought to know? Just- Just to avoid running into this sort of situation again. We don’t...don’t want to be hired to go after some...I don’t know, some kind of magic...magic chair or something and fail just because Molly pissed it off once and doesn’t remember doing it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not me,” Molly snapped. He was getting truly sick of having to repeat that all the time. Maybe he should get it embroidered on a shirt or something. It’d save a lot of time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia’s smile grew a little wider, showing teeth. “So you have said.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A pause.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Very well. If you succeed in this, I will hold his debt to me repaid. If you attempt to run…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We won’t,” Molly said hastily. He didn’t actually need to hear the accompanying threats. He’d got a pretty good sense of what those were already.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia fixed him with a long, cool look, then raised a hand to signal the guards, who lowered their crossbows. That was...probably a good sign, as these things went.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau coughed. “So...we’re doing the job. And...I guess we’re doing it for free now, since Molly’s...uh...but, anyway. We might need a bit of extra help? Would- I mean, we’ve been screwed over once already by not having a healer, and that priest of yours seems pretty, uh, pretty capable-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He is. But his specialty is not in healing, and...in any case, you do recall that this cannot be traced back to my family without inviting reprisals.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...oh. Right.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You might have better luck with any of the wandering crazies in the city,” Ophelia added, almost carelessly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s face screwed up in confusion. “...what?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Our priest is not the only one.” She cocked her head a little to one side. “If you’re looking for help…” she paused, and gave a low, considering hum. “Could look to the Blooming Grove.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott was blinking. “Where's that? What’s that? Is that a town?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A burial grove, as it turned out. And apparently a near-deserted one, with just one hermit priest left to tend the graves there. Also, potentially cursed, but if it was far enough out of town and enough people were scared of the place, there was at least a pretty good chance that this person had never so much as heard the name ‘Lucien’ in their life, and right now, that sounded ideal.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...all right,” Nott said, at the end of that explanation. “So, you don’t want us staying here, I suppose? We should- We should scoot out so that we can’t be traced back to you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll lead you out the back route,” Ophelia said, straightening a little and clasping her hands behind her back. “Eyes on you leaving my estate would be...unwise. So.” She paused, and switched languages to speak to her guards - Zemnian, Molly thought, though he only really knew a few words of it, and that only enough really to rile Caleb up with just how many ways he could find to misconstrue or mispronounce them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He found himself wishing, suddenly, that Caleb was there, so that Molly could find ways to mispronounce everything Ophelia Mardun was saying now, and watch Caleb’s face twist the way it always did when someone got something wrong on purpose, like he’d bitten into a whole lemon and was now expected to say something nice about the taste.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wished that Caleb was there anyway. And Yasha. And Jester. And Fjord.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yash- How was she bearing up?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She didn’t talk much about what had happened between Zuala’s death and her falling in with the circus. Molly had got the feeling, though, that whatever had happened to her then, it had been bad. He’d done his best to deflect as much of the speculation as he could, coming up with the most outlandish stories about her being an avatar of her Stormlord, or some kind of lost princess, or any number of other things, just to see Yasha roll her eyes as some of the tension went out of her shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew that the Knot sisters thought she might’ve been a slave, before she came to them. If they’d been right-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ophelia had turned away, and was making her way up the stairs now, as the guards ringed around them again, as if they expected them to wander off and start looting the place or something if they were left unaccompanied.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...not that Molly was </span>
  <em>
    <span>opposed </span>
  </em>
  <span>to that idea, exactly, but stealing from the people who were paying you was something that was best done </span>
  <em>
    <span>after </span>
  </em>
  <span>you’d been paid. And only if they didn’t already have reasons to want your head on a pike.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do not disappoint me,” Ophelia said from about halfway up the stairs, turning her head to look at them with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>swish </span>
  </em>
  <span>of long hair that would’ve taken out anyone standing within about four feet of her. “I can be very…” A slow, sharp-toothed smile, only just this side of a snarl. “...</span>
  <em>
    <span>frustrated</span>
  </em>
  <span>, when I’m disappointed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For some reason - again, probably fucking Lucien, because just about every problem they’d run into since they </span>
  <em>
    <span>got </span>
  </em>
  <span>to Shadycreek Run seemed to be his fault in some way or other, had he managed to piss off </span>
  <em>
    <span>everyone </span>
  </em>
  <span>in the Greying Wildlands somehow? - they needed an entire phalanx of guards just to get them from the hall to the back entrance, through a dining room, a pantry and a wine-cellar.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ‘back entrance’ was a narrow tunnel hidden behind a rack of shelves, laden down with cases upon cases of wine. More wine than anyone could possibly drink, though right now Molly was sorely provoked to test that assertion. He had to nearly double to get in through the low doorway, and Nila had to go on hands and knees at the back of the party. Nott, of course, could stand full-height, which wasn’t actually a reason to be annoyed at her, but was easier to focus on than the fact that she’d nearly got him killed asking questions about a past that wasn’t anything to do with him or them.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The tunnel was too narrow to walk in anything but single-file. It had been meant as a last-ditch line of escape, Molly was guessing, in case the estate was ever taken, because you couldn’t get a decent-sized load of goods through here for smuggling purposes and, anyway, what would you even smuggle in a place where you could more-or-less buy and sell anything, up to and including your friends.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t a short walk, but not exactly a long one either, and when at last they came to a door, the guard leading the way did a complicated little knocking rhythm that was probably code for ‘it’s us, please don’t shoot whoever comes out’. They surfaced into the grey-purple clearing, deep in the forest, with a low bench and the stone ring of an uncovered well, so overgrown that even identifying them that far was more guesswork than anything on Molly’s part.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All things considered, Molly thought he was entirely justified in collapsing against the bole of a tree as soon as they were out of sight of the tunnel entrance, getting a good grip of his horns and just panicking for a good few minutes, because on the list of the most awful experiences of his life, running into Cree at the Evening Nip had just acquired yet more unexpected competition. He wanted to spend a few minutes screaming into a pillow or something, but sadly the forest was rather short on pillows and too long on Iron Shepherds and other predators for it to be worth the risk. He breathed in, deep and ragged, and tried not to think about anything at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Yasha. Yasha would know what to do. It should be her here. Her and Caleb. With those two, they’d probably be fine. Molly wasn’t the strong one, wasn’t the smart one, he could run a good line of bullshit, but not good enough...it ought to be them. Caleb might’ve worked out some way to get more help out of the Marduns, using that odd charisma he only ever seemed to bring out when things were really, truly desperate. Yasha was strong enough that she might’ve stood a chance at rescuing the others back on the road, during that ambush. Instead, they were left relying on some shady fucking ex-cultist and a secret tunnel that might or might not be a trap, and there was fuck-all Molly could really do about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh. Not dead, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It probably said something about just how on edge Molly was that just that one sentence had his hackles going up. Or maybe that was just how everyone reacted to the sound of Sito’s voice. If that were so, Molly couldn’t blame them, Sito was just plain unsettling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Disappointed?” he snapped back, forcing himself to straighten up a bit, and release his death-grip on his own horns.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shrugged. “I mean, I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>surprised</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Never would’ve thought she’d let you out of there alive once she’d seen your face, but...it’s all worked out, so let’s crack on. I went and had a look around the Sour Nest, while you were all…” they made a vague, dismissive gesture. “Paying your respects to ‘er nibs in there. She paid you in advance, or…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why do you care?” Nott snapped, bristling a little.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shrugged. “Extra share of the profits never hurt anyone. And since I’m getting you in, I’d say I’m owed that much.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“Do you want it enough to let me stay where I am?” Molly asked, without much hope.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Otis laughed, a dry, creaking thing. “Nah. So. Shepherds are back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We knew that,” Molly muttered grumpily. “We know where it is, too. Do you have anything </span>
  <em>
    <span>useful </span>
  </em>
  <span>to share with the class, or were you just hanging around in the hope I’d drop dead and let you have the corpse?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was possible that he was carrying the </span>
  <em>
    <span>slightest </span>
  </em>
  <span>bit of a grudge about that. A person ought at least to be allowed to </span>
  <em>
    <span>die </span>
  </em>
  <span>in peace.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I promised you the tunnel entrance, didn’t I?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You did.” Beau crossed her arms. “Let’s see it, then.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito’s eyes flickered from her to Molly and back again.</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“If I’m showing you, it’s because we’re going in. I’m not wasting time showing you just so you can run off back to Shadycreek, ditch me in a tavern somewhere and sneak back on your own to cheat me out of what I’m owed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you realise I’m standing right here?” Molly said, less because he really thought Sito hadn’t noticed than just to remind them that he was, in fact, capable of having an opinion on the subject.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Should we...I don’t know...look for that hermit guy first?” Nott asked, looking around the clearing but somehow managing to avoid Molly’s eyes entirely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau scowled. “...I don’t know. Nila, can you- I don’t know, can you scout it out for us? Find out if that little weasel’s lying to us or not. Wouldn’t put it past him- shit, them, sorry-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh, I don’t care,” Sito said, stuffing their hands in their pockets. “Anything’s good.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right. So, wouldn’t put it past them to make up some shit to get us all killed. Offence </span>
  <em>
    <span>fully </span>
  </em>
  <span>intended,” she added, glaring at Sito. “So, we double-check, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>then </span>
  </em>
  <span>we try and figure out if we’re going to need any more help.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There’s a hermit you need to find now?” Sito asked. Oh, for- If it was going to turn out that Lucien had pissed the hermit off as well, Molly was going to take a leaf out of Caleb’s book and set something on </span>
  <em>
    <span>fire</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Preferably Sito.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I dunno. But we could get a few more fighters. Could do with another magic-user, since all we’ve got now is Nott, after all the others got fucking taken.” Beau coughed. “I mean...we’re gonna need to do some recruiting, what with you taking Molly away, so…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...right, right.” Sito’s eyes narrowed. “So. You know which way it is to the Sour Nest, or am I gonna have to show you that, too?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Molly said flatly. He jerked his head towards the feeling of </span>
  <em>
    <span>Caleb</span>
  </em>
  <span>, still grey and faded as if he was searching through mist, but not so distant now. “It’s over there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau ended up taking the lead, which suited Molly well enough. From his position at the rear of the group, someone would have to be actually looking back to see him retrieve the pouch of medicinal moss from out of his pack to chew on a little more of it. It helped. His head felt clearer, afterwards. He hadn’t realised just how much blood he’d been losing until then. And, checking under Beau’s borrowed cloak, he could say this shirt was definitely a write-off, and he’d be scrubbing bloodstains out of the lining of his coat for weeks once they got back to Zadash. Maybe he’d go into Pumat’s covered in blood and try to talk him into magicking Molly clean the same way he had Caleb.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he got back to Zadash. They had a plan, but...it wasn’t a </span>
  <em>
    <span>great </span>
  </em>
  <span>plan. And it wouldn’t matter to Sito if they all died, just so long as he could get his hands on Molly’s body. Maybe not even then, if the Marduns’ priest had it right.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they were the Nein’s best hope of getting in and rescuing the others before things got any worse. But it was Yasha in there, and Caleb, and Jester and Fjord, and any number of other people besides. Nila’s partner and their kid, probably a few others from their village, and more from...wherever it was they’d caught the people they’d found dead on the roadside, and hadn’t been able to bury. Who’d died because they’d ambushed their captors at the wrong time, with too little preparation, and Lorenzo hadn’t given a fuck about his prisoners, even so far as whatever profits he’d get from selling them later. Even if they hadn’t done it, if none of it would’ve happened if the Shepherds hadn’t abducted all these people to start with...hard not to feel at least a little responsible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The forest didn’t help. Somehow, it seemed to have got even creepier in the space between going in through the front gates at the Estate Sybaritic and coming out again via the back passage. Not that Molly was an expert on forests, but this one sent cold fingers up and down the back of his neck just standing here, even before you brought in fucking giant bears with bone spurs and claws like meathooks that seemed to be able to smell the blood on Molly even with Nila’s spell to cover their tracks. It had given Molly the fright of his life when the great, shaggy beast sat upright, its great nose twitching a little, head turning back and forth as it scented the air.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If this had been one of Desmond’s stories, that would have been the point at which Molly stepped on a dry twig, which would crack with a suitably loud noise to make any attempts at stealth pointless. Or that Lorenzo would get off his lunch break or whatever the fuck he was doing and go back to torturing Caleb, forcing Molly to make some kind of noise to give himself away. Molly was going to be thanking the Moonweaver probably for the rest of the week at least that he </span>
  <em>
    <span>wasn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>in one of Desmond’s stories, but just that moment had been terrifying enough.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Honestly, Molly was inclined to consider it a minor miracle that they made it to the Sour Nest at all, because that bear couldn’t be the only thing in this whole forest attracted to the smell of blood. The Sour Nest was probably home to at least two more of them, for one thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It did not, he had to say, look very much like a nest. It looked like a- a fort, he supposed, what little he could see of it, and ringed around with a high wooden wall, thick enough for guards to walk two abreast along the top of it, behind a guardrail of sharpened wooden stakes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There were guards patrolling right now, in fact - nobody Molly recognised from the road, but Keg had already said they hired people for this sort of thing - but from this angle, hidden among the trees, he couldn’t make out much of whatever lay beyond it. The place had been built relatively low, and the trees had been cut back on every side, so that anyone coming up to those walls would have to be in plain view of the guards on said walls. Anyone who tried it in daylight would probably end up a pincushion before they’d even got halfway, even making allowances for some of the guards maybe not having the best aim, and that was before they even tried to get </span>
  <em>
    <span>in</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So?” Sito said, turning to Beau. “I told you I scouted out the place.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg was squinting. “The gate’s on the other side - you see a cart come in?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’re in there,” Molly said grimly. Or, Caleb was, anyway. He didn’t want to think about the other possibilities. That Yasha, Jester, Fjord, had been thrown carelessly off the back of the cart like rubbish, somewhere between here and the edge of the forest, and they just hadn’t stumbled over the body to find out. That they were already dead - these breaks in Caleb’s torture might just mean that Lorenzo was experimenting with torturing someone else, to see if he could get the same results, or just for the fun of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito’s face screwed up. “...I mean, they are, but...how do you know that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Wordlessly, Molly held up the hand with the ring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito blinked at it. They did not, it had to be said, look any less lost.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Magic fuckery,” Molly explained grudgingly. “I know where he is, he knows where I am. Can do a few other things too, but we’re...uh...we’re still testing those out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...right.” Sito shifted a little. For a moment, they looked almost uncomfortable. They glanced over at Beau, and asked. “This going to interfere with our deal?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau glared at them. “I’m not the one you made the deal with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito made a discontented, throaty sort of noise. “I mean it. Deal was, I’d get that one,” they jerked their head at Molly. “And he’d come quiet and let us put him back the way he should be-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look, I said I’d do it, I never said I’d do it </span>
  <em>
    <span>quietly</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Molly snapped. Technically he’d even been lying about that first bit - he hoped he still was, even - but the least he could do at this point was make Otis feel bad about worse than killing him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito didn’t even look around at him. “I want a promise. No-one’s coming after him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau shifted. “...I promise,” she gritted out, like it hurt her to do it. “You don’t fuck us, and everything goes as planned...then we won’t come after you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito narrowed their eyes a little, then nodded, just a little, small and jerky and suspicious. “Tunnel’s a way out. Was meant as a bolthole, i‘case things turned against us. Sort of a slack run. Pretty well hidden, too. At both ends.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...well-hidden enough that you’re sure they haven’t found it?” Beau asked, frowning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito screwed up their face. “...can’t promise that. But it’s a better chance than you’ll have out here, and it’s not like it’s common knowledge. Even with the Tomb Takers, only people who knew about this way out were me and Lucien, and I only knew ‘cause I was the one that found it in the first place.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t want the- the rest of your teammates to know about it?” Nott asked, in a soft, confused voice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shrugged. “Lucien’d tell them if we ever needed to use it. But, uh, he liked to keep things close to the chest.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly could happily have gone the rest of his life without ever finding that out. Or, indeed, anything else about fucking Lucien, if at all possible.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott’s face creased. “But- What if he wasn’t there and you needed to get out in a hurry, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito just shrugged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...so,” Molly said into the silence that followed, as obnoxiously cheerful as he could make himself sound. Not very, under the circumstances, but he was doing his best. “We heading out to do that recruiting now, or sticking around to see if the guards’ll spot us first?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau rubbed at her face. “...gonna say move. Can you draw us some kind of plan for this place?” she demanded, looking at Sito. “Like, a floorplan or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or- You know, we could get Nila- We have an animal companion!” Nott said, straightening up a bit. “I mean, not as good as Caleb’s, but if she were to- to turn into a- a bug or a bird or something and fly around inside, she could see what’s going on in there, maybe find out if- if this secret tunnel is guarded, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes. I can do that. I have...twice more, unless we rest.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau paused. “...so, if you do it now, to become...I don’t know, a fuckin’- What sort of bird could get in there without being noticed? Maybe a- a moth or something? I don’t know, I’m just...it needs to be something they won’t just shoot down for entertainment or something, and we might want something on more of a ground-level anyway, so if you become a moth and then turn into a- a mouse or something, you won’t get to turn into a crocodile later and fucking destroy them that way?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Nila said serenely. “And I would </span>
  <em>
    <span>like </span>
  </em>
  <span>to destroy them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay. Okay, cool. Uh…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How long a rest does it have to be?” Molly asked, frowning. “Are we talking...full eight hours, or could you get by on just a nap and a sandwich or something?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila blinked. “An hour would do, I think.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly nodded. “So, you scout the place out now, we-” He swallowed. He didn’t want to leave the others in there for even an hour longer than they had to. From the looks on everyone’s faces, he wasn’t the only one. Well, everyone’s but Sito’s. Sito just looked uncomfortable, which they </span>
  <em>
    <span>deserved</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Slowly, grudgingly, Beau nodded. “Might as well. Or, you know, you could turn into something small and flying that they might not notice…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can be a butterfly,” Nila volunteered. “It was one of the hardest shapes to learn, but I can do it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott paused. “...is that...because of the size difference, or…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is difficult, to become something much smaller than I am,” Nila admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right, right...bigger things are easier, though?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do not know. I cannot become very many things bigger than I am.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay, so, butterfly. Not many people try and get rid of those.” Beau nodded. “Try it now. We know they’re in there, but...numbers, how many are armed, that sort of thing...whereabouts people are concentrated, ‘cause I’d rather we didn’t come out of this tunnel straight into a- a basement full of fucking Shepherds goons, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I will try,” Nila promised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The effect of her transformation was more dramatic, this time, in that it seemed to happen all at once - Nila’s body shrinking and twisting, sprouting an extra set of limbs around her midsection as wings burst from her back - until a red-and-blue butterfly fluttered into the air where Nila had been standing, and winged off towards the Sour Nest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The worst part was the waiting.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, actually, the worst part was knowing how close they were. So close it almost felt like Molly could reach out and touch Caleb, could find his hand in the mist and cling to it, as a reminder that there was at least one person still alive to be saved.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t, of course. Even the bond didn’t work that way. At least, not that Molly had found out yet. He hadn’t known about the injuries thing before Caleb had done it, either, so it wouldn’t surprise him if there were a few other hidden tricks involved. They should probably get Pumat to take a look at the rings, next time they were in Zadash. Maybe they could fit that in around the bookshop expedition Molly had promised, back in Berleben. He could stop in at that bakery and get Yasha another fruit tart, while they were out, because she’d want something, and it was all he could think of to give her, when every time she was really hurt she drew away into herself and wouldn’t let anyone close enough to see how deep it went.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rested himself against the thought of it, the promise of another day like that. It helped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The phantom ache in his shoulders had got worse since the knife wounds had stopped coming. It was spreading now, through his chest, and this- This wasn’t a pain Molly could seem to take away, no matter how hard he tried. Maybe that was why they were doing it - somehow, they’d figured out that he’d be able to feel it, but not to make it </span>
  <em>
    <span>stop</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except-</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Let’s see if you’ll do the same</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Lorenzo had said.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Hadn’t that- Molly would be the first to admit, he wasn’t the expert on the way the minds of sadistic slavers worked. He’d never particularly wanted to be, and a closer acquaintance hadn’t done anything to make him any more interested in anything about Lorenzo except, possibly, what sort of noises he’d make as he died. But it had sounded like Lorenzo wanted Molly to do...exactly what he’d done. Take Caleb’s injuries, patch them up as best he could on his own - which was pretty well, Molly was going to have to go back and thank Jumnda all over again for the moss, or he really </span>
  <em>
    <span>would </span>
  </em>
  <span>have keeled over by now - and, eventually, Lorenzo had been very clear about that part, die from it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly...hadn’t actually thought that far ahead, if he was honest. He’d just...done it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He watched the guards patrolling around the high wall of the Sour Nest, and tried not to think at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She’s back!” Beau said out of nowhere, jolting them all to attention, as the butterfly came fluttering down through the treeline, making a beeline - butterflyline? - directly for them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The process of turning from a butterfly back into Nila was, if anything, even more interesting to watch than the other way around had been, though it was over about as quickly. Entirely worthy of the little round of applause it got from him and Beau, anyway - at this point agreeing with her seemed to be turning into a </span>
  <em>
    <span>habit</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but Molly defied anyone not to want to give a performance like that its due - even if it made Nila duck her head shyly under the praise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Awesome!” Beau declared, springing up. “What did you learn!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>What she had learned, apparently, was that Lorenzo quite possibly </span>
  <em>
    <span>ate babies</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Specifically, Nila’s baby. She hadn’t found her son. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>hoped </span>
  </em>
  <span>she hadn’t found her son, at least. She hadn’t found anyone else, either. They were being kept below ground, in the dungeons Keg had told them about. Sito had been suspiciously quiet on the subject of what those dungeons had been used for before. Molly didn’t know whether or not he was relieved about that. He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to know, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There had been a trapdoor, and voices from underneath it. The trapdoor was in a small closet, a bit tucked away, with the thickest, strongest door in the whole keep. If they could kill the guards in the basement quick enough, they might be able to keep the advantage of surprise. Only seven beds in the whole place - only seven Iron Shepherds. The hirelings must sleep elsewhere. Or all on the floor in the mess hall, the way some taverns had it, for guests that couldn’t pay the full fee.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>...that was actually not a bad thought. He asked Keg about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shook her head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“‘Bout that, yeah. I mean...Shadycreek’s Shadycreek, y’know? Even the floor’s a step up. At least it’s inside and mostly out of the wet. If there’s a fire going as well…” she shrugged. “Always going to be at least a couple awake and patrolling, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And we can’t waste time finding out patrol routes,” Beau summed up, scrubbing a hand over her face. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Cool.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, more help?” Molly prodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau nodded, looking relieved. “More help. Don’t want to hang around here when they spotted Nila already. Let’s clear out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, it couldn’t be that simple.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It felt like-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, like someone had just stabbed him in the side. First just the ghost of it, but then- At this point, it was almost instinctive, to reach for that feeling and pull it close, like scooping up a struggling cat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It didn’t feel much deeper than the last few strokes, at first, even as Caleb’s panic, sharp and clear, cut through the fog.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was no way </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>to feel it, how deep it had gone, and Molly-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s legs buckled under him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-the hell-?” he heard someone - Beau? - say, somewhere...far distant. Probably that was something important, but it was hard to think of why.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The next thing he was aware of was...more of Beau shouting. Had she actually stopped at some point, or had he just not heard her? He didn’t see how he could’ve missed it, but there seemed to be a gap in the events. Also, at some point during that gap, he’d ended up flat on the ground with something cold and damp and decidedly unpleasant soaking through the back of his coat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-fuck were you thinking? You </span>
  <em>
    <span>said </span>
  </em>
  <span>no heroic self-sacrifice bullshit! How are you even-” Beau broke off, as Molly squinted up at her. His head felt slow and heavy, but the pain in his side was...less than it had been. It ached dully as he pushed himself up on his elbows, but when he pressed his fingers against it, he found smooth new skin under his fingertips.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I miss something?” he managed, rather weakly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s nostrils flared. From this angle, they were a lot more obvious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” she said tightly. “Yeah, you fucking missed something. Maybe you </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>have if you hadn’t-” she stopped, breathing in sharply. “Why- This is. You’re...taking his injuries.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly nodded. He wished someone would give him his cloak back. Well. Beau’s cloak, anyway. The cloak he had been wearing. That cloak. He’d probably got blood on the blue side, too, so that was another reason Beau had to be hacked off at him. He shrugged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It seemed fair.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s jaw worked. “How long?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Couple days, maybe? They didn’t get to the Sour Nest until late the same night we made it to town. Torture didn’t start in ‘til far too early this morning.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau grimaced. “Of course he’d have to be a fucking morning person- So you’ve been...what, just...taking it, all day?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...more or less.” Molly tried to sit up. It took more out of him than he’d be expecting, but no sudden, agonising pain, which was definitely a good thing, but still more than a little confusing. “Why am I not a pincushion right now?” he asked, just out of curiosity, because that seemed like a good thing to know at this point.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau growled. “Because </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nila </span>
  </em>
  <span>knows some healing spells and thought it’d be a good idea to have them ready in case any of us got hurt in the fighting once we got in. You can’t- Shit.” She straightened up, raking a hand through her hair, tugging it half-out of its topknot. “Shit. Look- You know you can’t do this again, right? We can’t rescue them if you’re all-” she slashed a hand through the air in his direction sharp. “What were you even planning to do, bleed on them? We’re- You’re no fucking use to </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone </span>
  </em>
  <span>dead!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She broke off with a pained, choky sort of noise, and shut her eyes. Sito, behind her, was looking twitchy. Well, no wonder, they were the one person to whom he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>of more use dead. Or at least considerably less trouble.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No fucking- No heroic self-sacrifice. You said that, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused. “...yeah,” he admitted warily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then would you mind telling me what the fuck you thought you were doing? We’ve lost enough people this week.” Beau’s shoulders hunched a little, as if in anticipation of a blow. “You think it’ll make things better to lose another one?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t planning on </span>
  <em>
    <span>dying</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Molly retorted, more than a little sulkily. His head still hurt. This seemed rather unfair, considering he hadn’t been stabbed in it. “I’ve been using that healing moss we got from Nila’s village, seems to be working well enough.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau’s brow furrowed. “...the…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“This.” Molly reached into an inside pocket of his coat, where he’d been keeping it, and produced the little pouch to wave at her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She blinked. “...we still have that?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“About half a bag of it, yes, we do, so now we’ve settled that-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Molly. You </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>do this again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “I don’t see how you’re planning to stop me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, what, you’re just going to keep chugging down health potions or- whatever the fuck that moss does? That’s not- It’s not going to work! Not long-term-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How much ‘long-term’ do we have left? I thought we were planning to do the rescue today.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We were!” Beau snapped. “We are! Fuck, this is…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” Nott put in, a little awkwardly. “It’s...it’s got to be better this way, right? I mean...Molly has his bag of- of healing moss drug things, so he’s going to be fine ‘till that runs out. Caleb doesn’t have </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau groaned. “Nott-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I mean...think about it. I mean...Molly’s fine, you heard him, he just </span>
  <em>
    <span>said </span>
  </em>
  <span>he was fine-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He is not fine,” Nila cut in. “He is still healing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, but...if Caleb is getting </span>
  <em>
    <span>tortured</span>
  </em>
  <span>, then…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was what Molly had thought himself. Caleb had no means of healing, Molly did. So why did it annoy him so much when </span>
  <em>
    <span>Nott </span>
  </em>
  <span>was the one saying it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t see you offering up your back for the job,” he said sourly, which didn’t make a lot of sense even as he was saying it, but at least made him feel a bit better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott bristled. “Well, I can’t, can I? You’re the one with the- the special magic connection or whatever!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were the one who didn’t want a ring!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>couldn’t marry him, I’m-” Nott broke off. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Just a kid, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Molly filled in. She did so hate to admit it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg, Sito and Nila all looked completely baffled. Gods alone knew what sort of love-triangle situation they thought was going on here. Goblin ages weren’t that easy to pinpoint, either, so it wasn’t as though they knew she was too young for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau huffed out a sigh. “Look. Caleb getting tortured is- it’s a fucking nightmare, okay, but I don’t see how </span>
  <em>
    <span>both </span>
  </em>
  <span>of you getting tortured is an improvement here! We’re down one already, we don’t know if any of the others are even still alive-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They’ll be alive,” Keg promised. “The Shepherds are going to want to make some profit out of all this. They’re not...I mean, Lorenzo’s a fucking monster, but the rest of them are gonna want to get paid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was weirdly reassuring.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau rubbed a hand across her face again. “Fuck. Okay. How- How long does it take? You said they break people? How long-?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg shook her head. “I don’t know. It- It varies, okay? Some- Some people take longer than others. It seemed like Lorenzo liked it more, the longer they took. He’d have Dwelma - the half-orc, the one we killed back on the road. She had a couple healing spells, could get people back into shape once they’d broken, so they wouldn’t have to sell damaged goods.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but...the breaking? How long-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...couple days, maybe. Less, sometimes.” Keg’s eyes dropped. “Most break on the third day. It’s not- It’s not all just…just hacking at them. Lorenzo...he likes watching them suffer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly’s stomach turned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay. Definitely killing him at our first opportunity, then. I mean, not that I was on the fence about it before, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg gave him a baffled look. “We’re killing all of them,” she insisted. “Every fucking one.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” Molly agreed. He had absolutely no problems with that plan. “But him in particular.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Co-signed,” Beau put in. “So. Nila, he fit to walk?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sitting right here, you realise?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, and you’ve been lying all day about being </span>
  <em>
    <span>fine </span>
  </em>
  <span>and walking around looking like a slaughterhouse under there,” Beau retorted. “I’m asking Nila first.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila gave a cautious little nod. “He should be well enough for that. But he should take some more of the moss, as well. I am not a very good healer. Jumnda is better than me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But I do feel remarkably un-dead, so thanks for that,” Molly added, because...well, there was a certain amount of necessary gratitude when someone had just saved your life from the torturing bastard who had apparently paused in working Caleb over for a little while, for some reason best known to himself. Really, Molly had never expected to be so grateful for someone shirking off work, but it sounded pretty weird, if Lorenzo was as keen on torture as Keg made him sound.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Caleb felt- Strange, now. Almost...there was something there, like seeing the flash of a smile before the trap snapped shut. Just a flash of it, there and gone, and then nothing but those same grey mists, the haze Caleb seemed to have sunk into almost as soon as he fell into the Shepherds’ hands.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly wanted to chase that feeling, to find out what had caused it, but the mist hid everything, blanketing Caleb’s mind in chill blankness and the horrible feeling that there was nothing else in the world but this grey, empty place, and the tether between their two minds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just so long as you </span>
  <em>
    <span>stay </span>
  </em>
  <span>that way,” Beau said, glaring at him. “No more self-sacrifice bullshit. Not from anyone. Well, I guess Sito’s allowed, if they really want, but-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not my area,” Sito put in, looking faintly spooked. “This, uh, this happen a lot?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hardly ever,” Molly said, as obnoxiously cheerful as he could manage, sitting there drenched in his own blood. “A first time for both of us. So, getting more help seems like a good idea, but I’m not really sure who we can really go for.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, no kidding,” Beau muttered. “Is there...you know anyone in town who definitely </span>
  <em>
    <span>wouldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>know this Lucien guy people keep getting all worked up about?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We weren’t exactly out to grab attention,” Sito said, shrugging. “But we ended up catching a bit of it anyway, after we took over the hideout. It was the Jagentoths’, before it was ours. But Lucien...had a way of making people think twice about arguing with him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, he sounds like a, uh, a real charmer,” Beau drawled. “You can’t think of anyone?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shrugged. “Lucien was here longer’n I was. I’m from down south, originally, and the Takers didn’t take that many jobs ‘round the run itself. Didn’t want to shit where we ate, and all that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They cast a look at Molly, who avoided their eyes. He didn’t want to know where Sito was from. He didn’t want to know why they’d followed Lucien so devotedly that they were now harassing Molly about it. He didn’t want to know what it was about Lucien that had spooked a crime family that the Marduns didn’t want to go against directly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had the horrible, sinking feeling that, if Sito stuck around, he was going to end up learning all three.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Okay, but,” Nott butted in. “Maybe they don’t have to not know this Lucien guy. So long as they’re willing to take orders from him-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Bit difficult, since he’s out of commission,” Molly said, with as much forced insouciance as he could muster.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-take orders from you, I mean,” Nott amended. “I mean...you had to- had to have other people you knew in town, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito grunted. “...we didn’t exactly make ourselves popular.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did you really,” Molly said, with no small amount of asperity. He couldn’t pull it off quite as well as Ornna - ‘haughty’ wasn’t an expression Molly had often had to bother with, even when posing as the reincarnated King of Whitestone, when he was still new and hadn’t even figured out a name for himself. Honestly, he hadn’t put in all that much practice.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau huffed out a breath. “Great. Are the- Are these Grudge Gang people we keep hearing about- Do they have a- uh, a grudge against you too, or-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They...might not be ‘specially keen on us, no,” Sito admitted, after another awkward moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It really was starting to look as if Lucien had managed to piss off very nearly everyone he’d ever met. And those he hadn’t pissed off had apparently decided to devote themselves to him to the point of just hanging around for years in the hope that he’d show up and tell them what to do again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shuddered a little at the thought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg was giving Sito a narrow-eyed look. “It’s not- It’s not that simple. The Grudge Gang isn’t- It’s not that organised. It’s just...a lot of like-minded mercenaries, I guess. No-one’s really in charge, at least, not for long, but most of them know most other Grudge Gang people, and a lot of the time they’ll take jobs together based on that. But it’s not- It’s not exactly a </span>
  <em>
    <span>gang</span>
  </em>
  <span>. I mean, all of the Grudge Gang are- They don’t swear to any of the gangs, they keep themselves out of it, and they work for whoever’ll hire them. They’ll fight each other, if they’re paid to, but that’s just a job.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So it’s not an </span>
  <em>
    <span>organisation </span>
  </em>
  <span>of people Molly’s pissed off?” Nott surmised.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> haven’t pissed off </span>
  <em>
    <span>anyone</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” Molly snapped, then paused. “...well, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>much. Nobody here, anyway. Well, nobody here that you weren’t there to see me piss off, anyway.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d probably annoyed Ophelia Mardun just by being alive, admittedly, but not enough for her to kill him, and that had been the arsehole Lucien’s fault anyway.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s still- I mean, it’s not you you, but it was- it was still you, right? I mean, you don’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>remember </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, but-”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“That’s not-” Molly broke off. Okay. In the strictest, most technical sense, that might even be true. But it wasn’t- Molly had never even </span>
  <em>
    <span>heard </span>
  </em>
  <span>of Lucien before he left the circus. He’d been quite happy to leave the guy in the grave Molly had dug himself out of it, so why did the arsehole keep refusing to stay buried?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Let’s, uh, let’s skip over the...existential shit,” Beau interrupted. Molly shot her a grateful look, and immediately regretted it. Oh, dammit, was he going to have to start </span>
  <em>
    <span>liking </span>
  </em>
  <span>Beau? Out loud? At least Beau looked about as alarmed by that idea as Molly felt. “So. We could hire these guys, but, just to play devil’s advocate here, is it an issue if we get a hired mercenary group to kill another underground faction in their same town? Is that-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Could that trace back to Ophelia? Is that what you’re saying?” Keg asked, a furrow deepening between her eyebrows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, I don’t know, that’s just a weird political issue, hiring someone in the system.”</span>
  <span>
    <br/>
  </span>
  <span>“But!” Nott said, holding up her hands. “Okay, we’ve got- We’ve got Molly, here, right? Who </span>
  <em>
    <span>looks </span>
  </em>
  <span>like someone who- who might want rid of the Iron Shepherds to get his- to get his gang’s hideout back, right? And we’ve got Sito, so maybe, we make it look like the- like these Tomb Takers were behind it-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...you know, if you’re planning to frame someone,” Sito said casually. “Maybe wait until they aren’t standing right next to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott glared at him. “Well, do you want the hideout back? I thought you were- You were planning to leave, after-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re going to want </span>
  <em>
    <span>somewhere </span>
  </em>
  <span>to come back to, once Lucien’s back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly gritted his teeth. “Can I just preemptively veto any plan involving me pretending to be Lucien again? Because, clearly,” he went on, gesturing at Sito. “I am not </span>
  <em>
    <span>nearly </span>
  </em>
  <span>as good at that as we were led to believe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That and he didn’t like doing it. The more he heard of Lucien, the more he wanted to remove himself from literally anything to do with the guy. Lucien was dead and buried. Let him stay that way.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maybe before we go randomly hiring people: what do we need to make this attack?” Nott said hurriedly, which was the most obvious change of subject Molly had ever heard. “Maybe- I mean, we know what Nila and Keg can do, but do we...I mean, no offence,” she added, glancing over at Sito. “But we don’t know if you’re even going to be any use if it comes to a fight. What- What sort of thing can you do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito paused, and something in the back of Molly’s mind said: </span>
  <em>
    <span>Liar.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“Few things,” they admitted. “I’ve, uh, got some friends on the other side, you could call ‘em. Mostly magic. And this, of course.” They tapped the stock of their crossbow, and Molly saw Nott’s eyes narrow into slits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...okay. So, we have two Notts now,” he said, just to make Nott hiss and splutter like an angry teakettle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What-! No, that’s-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau frowned. “Any good with locks?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shook their head. “That was always Jurrell’s bit. Haven’t seen him since we split, though. He said something ‘bout heading for Bladegarden, seeing if he couldn’t find some work there, ‘til Lucien got back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were all going to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>disappointed if I’d just stuck with the circus, weren’t you?” Molly said nastily. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he got his way, they’d be pretty disappointed anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” Nott added, papering over the hole in the conversation that Sito had left. “Do we- We’re not attacking, right? We’re just going to go and try to rescue, or maybe pick off one or two of them, or smoke them out, so that the prisoners, or whatever, have to leave and we can rescue, right? We’re not trying to kill everyone in the motherfucking house, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau shrugged. “Well, this Ophelia wants us to kill everyone in the motherfucking house.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nott shook her head. “No, I mean- </span>
  <em>
    <span>Obviously </span>
  </em>
  <span>we’re killing everyone in the motherfucking house eventually, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt Caleb</span>
  </em>
  <span>-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And Yasha,” Molly reminded her. “And Fjord and Jester and...probably a lot of other people, too.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-but do we have to do it all in one go?” Nott finished. “I mean...we get them all out, then once we’re clear, Caleb can just…” she made a vague gesture that presumably meant ‘fireball’. “Fwoom.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We don’t exactly know he’ll be in any state to do that, though,” Beau said, frowning, and then shooting a glance over at him. “Uh...Molly? How is he doing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly grimaced. “...hard to tell. Lorenzo hasn’t started back in on him, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At least, not physically. Keg had said Lorenzo was a talker. And Caleb...funny, but physical pain didn’t seem to break through that mist at all. It wasn’t that it didn’t come through the bond - Molly had felt Caleb react to every injury in every fight they’d ever been in, since the rings - but Caleb...Caleb had gone away inside himself, it seemed like, and found some place that the pain didn’t touch.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It must be driving Lorenzo up the wall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly thought he could guess how Lorenzo would respond to that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We should hurry,” he said quickly. “I don’t know how much longer Lorenzo’s going to want to play with his food.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg had gone faintly greenish. Nott looked as though she would’ve liked to, but was already so green that the feeling didn’t have anywhere to go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean...they can still sell him?” Beau offered, sounding awkward. “It’s...it’s fucking awful, but like Keg said, these people are gonna want to get paid-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg grimaced. “They are. Magic-users were always the most expensive. Hard to capture ‘em, hard to keep ‘em. They’re considered pretty high-risk for the buyer as well, but...some people think it’s worth it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was hard to look at Keg the same way, after that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Probably Nott would say that was hypocritical, given all the shit it seemed like Lucien had got up to, but Molly always thought he’d done as decent a job at being decent as he could manage, under the circumstances. And Keg </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>trying to be better now, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You only ended up knowing that sort of thing if you’d been in the business of buying and selling people for a while. By the looks on the others’ faces - well, all except Sito, anyway - they were thinking the same thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg’s shoulders hunched under their scrutiny.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I know,” she muttered. “I know. I- If we can get these people out, then maybe…” she scrubbed a hand over her face. “Maybe I can start making it up. I don’t know if it’ll make any difference, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never too late to try,” Molly said, with a poor attempt at cheerfulness, but...well. Better that she try than not. And they couldn’t afford to lose another fighter, anyway. It was the other half of why they were putting up with Sito, after all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Nila was still looking at Keg. Her expression was completely unreadable, which, on her, had almost the same effect as a glare. Keg hunched a little further into herself, her face a mask of guilt and misery. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“If we’re going to hire people,” Beau said after another fraught moment. “We’re going to need money - how much do we all have left?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A fair bit, as it turned out. Keg had a hundred and thirty gold just for herself, and didn’t want to talk about where she’d got it. The Nein had a few hundred between them in Jester’s haversack. It was more money than Molly had ever seen in his life before he left the circus - it was more money than most people ever saw in their lives. Definitely more than most ever saw all in one place. They could probably hire half of Shadycreek Run if they wanted...and if they could trust anyone to actually help.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean...we don’t really need to take out the outside guards,” Keg said after a moment, scratching at her beard. “Once the actual Shepherds are dead, they’re probably going to run and spread the story, though. Don’t know if your bosses want that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They did say ‘kill everyone inside’,” Nott agreed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shrugged. “I’m fine with that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not like the guards hadn’t known what they were getting into, after all. They’d been fine with the idea of helping the Shepherds buy and sell other people so long as they got a share of the profits. They could share the Shepherds’ fate as well, so far as Molly was concerned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Keg looked even more uneasy at that, but if she had a problem with the idea, she didn’t say anything.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is there anything we’re missing?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There was a pause, as they all tried to figure that out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I mean...we’ve still got the moss?” Nott said after a moment. “It’s not...not going to help us if anyone dies, or anything, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And Nila has that healing spell thing-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Healing Words,” Nila supplied. “But it is not...I can only use it so many times…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And you’ve already used it once on Molly,” Beau finished for her, shooting a look at Molly, who refused to feel guilty about it. Sure, they’d wasted a spell slot. But that last injury, the knife in Caleb’s side-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had felt like a killing blow to Molly. Not a quick one, maybe, but it would’ve killed Caleb, all the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lorenzo hadn’t tried again, but if he did-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And if he was willing to kill Caleb, and never mind how valuable he might be to some very rich arsehole somewhere as a slave...who was to say the others were even still alive?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dragged his attention back to the conversation, which had moved on without him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“-we did hear about that weird- Someone said that there's some priest or something, or cleric?” Nott was saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Beau nodded. “Ophelia mentioned that, yeah.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, so we could go see if they could give us-”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or come along?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly frowned. “...any idea where this place is?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Far enough away, it turned out, that it would take most of the day to find it, but-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If the others were in anything like the state Caleb must be in by now, they were going to need a healer.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito’s face twisted a little as they listened. “...you’re going to the Bone Orchard?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That sounds ominous,” Molly said. “I like it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, we’re going.” Beau frowned. “Why. They don’t, like, eat corpses, or…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito shrugged. “Might do. Fucking creepy, either way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was pretty rich, coming from the former cultist whose cult apparently had weird blood powers. Either that or this Blooming Grove place must be really quite impressively creepy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well, we can deal with ‘fucking creepy’,” Beau said harshly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And if this person lives in the Savalirwoods, then they're not weak,” Keg added, more thoughtfully. “There's a lot of crazy shit in the woods, so they must be able to hold their own, or at least remain discreet.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And they don’t belong to any pact or- or group that we would need to negotiate with?” Nott asked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, they live outside the- They’re not even related to the clans.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sito grunted. “There’s a reason we never fucked with them,” they admitted grudgingly, folding their arms. “I mean- Pretty sure Lucien could’ve seen to them if we ever had to, but since they never bothered us…just didn’t seem worth the fight when they had nothing we wanted.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Sure</span>
  </em>
  <span> he could,” Beau said derisively. “But, sure, that means this guy’s got to be dangerous enough it’s worth </span>
  <em>
    <span>asking</span>
  </em>
  <span>, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m up for it,” Molly volunteered.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Great.” Beau met his eyes. “But, if we’re doing this...no more of the self-sacrifice bullshit. We get them out, we get them healed, and we’re doing it in that order. That clear enough for you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I don’t know where you got this idea that you can give me orders,” Molly said, but- She was right. Gods, why was he stuck agreeing with Beau again? But she was right. Anything short of a mortal wound, Caleb could survive long enough for them to get there. That didn’t mean Molly had to be gracious about it. “All right. Anything that won’t kill him, I won’t take. Clear enough for </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And if it will kill him?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly paused.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...we’re going to find a healer, aren’t we?” he asked. “He can deal with it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And if he just keeps killing Caleb, over and over, until the healer runs out of spells?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly shifted uneasily.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He didn’t know, was the thing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>In a fight, sure. He could say he was willing enough to die for any of others that way, but that- That was just taking his chances. But this-</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’d have to </span>
  <em>
    <span>choose </span>
  </em>
  <span>it. Knowing, full well, what it would mean.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Molly didn’t know he had that in him. He didn’t know how Caleb had done it. But could he just stand there, and do nothing, as he felt every bloody second of it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“...I guess we’ll find out.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I have already apologised for my fight scenes, but this might actually be worse than the last one.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They set a brutal pace through the forest, with Nila at the head of their column, having checked her stink pouch again just to be sure they were making the right decision, and Keg taking Molly’s usual place at the rear, since even with all the healing he’d been getting, nobody wanted to chance him succumbing to blood loss without them noticing if he decided to re-open that connection.</p><p>Molly had tried to be offended about that assumption, but it was hard, when lashes of phantom pain scored themselves across his back, just a whisper of coldness against skin, and hollow feeling of the Glory Run Road, when he had looked down at his chest to see Lorenzo’s glaive sticking out of it, and no blood on the blade at all. He’d almost given in twice on the march, only to find himself brought up short by Beau’s eyes boring into the back of his neck, or her hand closing around his wrist. Apparently he couldn’t get away with <em> anything </em> anymore, like he was new again and Gustav had assigned Bo - the <em> other </em>Bo, the one whose name Molly could actually spell - to watch him and make sure he didn’t wander off into the woods and get eaten by bears or something.</p><p>The worst of it, though, was the slow, creeping feeling through the bond. The slow fading of that grey mist and, beyond that...Caleb wasn’t even angry, was the worst of it. As Molly’s footsteps took him farther and farther away from his- from Caleb, all he could feel was resignation. As if Caleb had always known that Molly was going to leave him behind, and no amount of useless attempts at reassurances, of thinking as hard as he could that this was only temporary, that Molly was walking away only so that the Nein might stand a better chance at rescuing him - rescuing all of them - seemed to do a thing to ease that feeling.</p><p><em> We’re coming, </em> Molly tried to promise, even knowing Caleb couldn’t hear. <em> We’re coming.  It won’t be very much longer now. Hold on. Hold out, if you can. </em></p><p>He wished he couldn’t feel Sito’s eyes on him. He wished Yasha were there.</p><p>They’d been walking for three and a half hours when they stumbled onto the wall. Or- Maybe ‘wall’ was the wrong word. Extremely overgrown hedge? Whatever it was, it had thorns long and sharp enough to impale a person, and on the other side of it, the first greenery Molly had seen all day in this benighted forest.</p><p>“...Desmond used to tell stories about this sort of situation,” he said conversationally, as they all looked at the towering mass of purple-grey vines coiled around rusted iron bars. “Apparently ninety-nine out of a hundred princes died on the thorns, which doesn’t seem like <em> great </em>odds. And then the hundredth decided to molest the sleeping princess on the other side, which made me think I’d have preferred it if the vines had got him, too.”</p><p>“Yeah. I’ve heard a story like that.” Beau wrinkled her nose. “Don’t think any of us really count as princes, though, unless anyone <em> else </em>has any secrets they’d like to share with the class?”</p><p>“It doesn’t count as a secret if I didn’t know about it myself,” Molly retorted, more out of habit than anything else.</p><p>“Sometimes, I used to think about leaving my clan to travel,” Nila volunteered. “I do not know if that counts as a secret, though. Nobody ever asked about it before.”</p><p>Beau considered that. “...I’m gonna say it doesn’t, but thanks for sharing.”</p><p>Nila smiled at her. “You are very welcome.”</p><p>“So...do we hop the fence?” Nott asked hurriedly. “Or...can we just hack at it, or…?”</p><p>There was a pause.</p><p>“...I mean, if someone lives there and we’re planning to ask for help,” Molly said after a moment. “Not sure we can just start hacking and still get them to help us at the end of it.”</p><p>“Not without forcing them, anyway,” Sito added idly.</p><p>Nott glared at them, then craned her neck to look. “There’s a bit of it that seems to be bent over there! We could get over there, if Nila or someone gave me a boost…”</p><p>“I can do that,” Nila volunteered at once. “Where is the bent place?”</p><p>It was a few feet along from them, and the weight of the vines had dragged it almost down to the ground. Beyond that, there were a few feet of desolate ground, undergrowth and thick thorn-bushes and great stone slabs half-covered by foliage, and another wall, just as overgrown as the first. It was harder to get across that one, even after Molly finally agreed to sacrifice his beautiful tapestry for the greater good - it hadn’t been bent quite so far, though the weight of grey-purple foliage was such that it was probably only a matter of time.</p><p>There was another wall beyond that, another patch of desolate ground. This one seemed newer. Less overgrown, though already grey-purple climbing vines were winding themselves around the iron posts, and rust was spreading out from where they wrapped around the metal.</p><p>Beyond that, the world was green.</p><p>It was warmer here. Correction, it was <em> far too warm </em> here. A humid, sticky warmth, the sort you’d find down in the far south in summer, and the reason why the circus usually only turned that way towards autumn, the better to escape the worst of the weather. Molly’s coat hadn’t been made for warmth, but even the scant weight of the silk was stifling now.</p><p>If everything beyond the last wall had been desolate, this island within it teemed with life. There was the smell of a green bog here, deep pools so covered over with algae that an incautious person might’ve tried to walk straight over them, thinking they were solid ground almost until the moment they started drowning. There were green trees and flowering thorn-bushes, grey stones beaded with moss. Quite a lot of stones - some standing, some fallen, all engraved with some writing that Molly couldn’t make out from this distance and honestly didn’t particularly care to try. And, around every one, there were flowers. A riot of them, in every imaginable colour and a few that Molly had never even thought of, filling the air with a heady, confusing, overwhelming perfume.</p><p>And there, beyond the flowering graveyard, stood the temple.</p><p>Molly had seen a lot of temples in his time. Never in any great <em> detail </em>, admittedly, but more-or-less every town and village in the Empire had them, and usually they were at least the most interesting buildings to look at. This one was no exception.</p><p>It was built a bit like a tower, though a tower for which there hadn’t been quite enough of a budget to get much above the height of your average decent-sized inn, broad at the base and narrowing into a high steeple, overgrown with climbing greenery. All of stone, unlike more-or-less every other building they’d seen this far north, with one large window set into the side facing them, that looked like it might’ve once been meant to hold some sort of design in stained glass. If it had been, though, the glass was long-gone, only the stone traceries left to show what the design had been.</p><p>It probably ought to have felt vaguely creepy. But it...didn’t, not really, despite the eerie quiet of the place, and the graves, and the wildly unnatural weather conditions for the far north in early autumn. If anything, there was something strangely <em> comforting </em>about the place. Molly half-wanted to curl up in the shadow of one of those great green oaks and take a nap.</p><p>That wasn’t a <em> great </em>sign either, of course, since Desmond had also had his fair share of stories about unwary travellers lured into sleeping in ill-advised places who slept for centuries, and this seemed like just the sort of place for that to happen.</p><p>Beau had broken off to examine one of the gravestones, squinting down at the carved words with a little furrow between her eyebrows. Molly left her to it - the script wasn’t one he could read, and even if it had been, it wasn’t as if he’d know anyone here.</p><p>“...so,” he said, “Do we just go up and say hello, or…?”</p><p>Nott screwed up her face, and took a gulp from her flask. “I’m gonna go...check it out, first. See if, you know, we’re not going to be eaten by monsters or anything. I mean, we’ve already found out <em> one </em>person in these woods eats babies. It might be a- a common thing, how would we know?”</p><p>“Pretty sure they don’t eat babies here,” Keg said, but she sounded doubtful, and was casting wary looks up at the temple ahead of them. “Do we- I don’t know if Ophelia said anything about which god this place is a temple to…”</p><p>Molly shrugged. He wasn’t exactly an expert on gods. He knew which ones were legal in the Empire, just for the sake of knowing who it was safe to claim he worshipped when talking about the Moonweaver would land him in a cell. He’d heard bits and pieces about the other gods worshipped by the others at the circus, though most of them kept that pretty quiet just for safety’s sake. </p><p>Nott, though, was already darting off across the greensward, dodging between the gravestones. She was doing quite well at it, too, until her cloak snagged on a thorny vine and sent her sprawling back with a disproportionately loud <em> thump </em>.</p><p>There was a long, fraught silence, broken only by an ill-timed burst of birdsong from a bird that clearly had no idea how to read a room, and the wind whistling through the trees.</p><p>With a squeak of unoiled hinges, the temple door swung open.</p><p>It took a moment to make out the person inside, before they stepped out into the light. The priest was a firbolg, and taller even than Nila, with a shock of vividly pink hair that contrasted strangely with the pale grey-white of the rest of his fur. He could have been called ‘thin’, but to do so would be a shameful waste of the opportunity to use the word ‘emaciated’. Also, Molly had already decided that he <em> wanted </em>that shirt. Okay, the flowing, draping sleeve might get in the way of using his swords a bit, but so had his coat, half the time, when he’d still been getting used to fighting in it, and the aesthetic was more than worth it.</p><p>He stared at them. They stared back.</p><p>“Huh,” the priest said after a moment. He had a deep, slow sort of voice. “I think I’ve only got...three more cups, hold on.”</p><p>Having said that, he disappeared back inside, as if the sudden arrival of a party of heavily-armed misfits was entirely unworthy of comment.</p><p>“Do you know her!” Nott demanded, scrambling back onto her feet and whirling to face Nila, her face shining. “Do you know him?”</p><p>“It’s a firbolg!” Nila was saying over her, sounding absolutely delighted. “He is a firbolg!”</p><p>“Do you know him? What’s his name?”</p><p>“I do not! But he’s a firbolg! He is one of my people!” she gasped, pressing her hands together under her chin. “This will be good! My smell bag was right again!”</p><p>The priest re-emerged a second later. This time, he was carrying a fat clay kettle and a metal tripod, a staff topped with some kind of purplish crystal in his other hand. As they all watched, bewildered, he set up the tripod, and poked it with the staff until the water started to bubble, before wandering off into the graveyard, paying no more attention to any of them than to the gravestones, or so it seemed, anyway.</p><p>“Uh...hello?” Molly called after him, because it didn’t seem like anyone else was going to and performing for strangers was, after all, Molly’s one and only marketable skill. “We’re the Mighty...well, the Mighty Drei, at the moment,” he was forced to admit, because that was the one bit of Zemnian he’d really been able to pick up off Caleb. “Usually it’s the MIghty Nein though. We were actually hoping to try and get your help with that, uh-”</p><p>“Mr Clay. And- Uh, sure. One second.”</p><p>Molly looked around wildly to see if anyone else had more of an idea of what was going on than he did. Nobody seemed to.</p><p>“...uh, can we tag along?” Nott asked. “Do you- Do you need any help there, Mr Clay?”</p><p>“What-” Clay looked around. “Nah, I’m fine. Just let me finish up here and I’ll be right with you.”</p><p>When he returned, it was with a bundle of red-purple flowers in a mortar bowl, grinding assiduously away.</p><p>“This is, uh, from Casala,” he said, though nobody had asked. “Textile family generations ago, but they make very good tea now.” He gave a pleased sort of sigh, and emptied the bowlful of flowers into the kettle with rapt concentration.</p><p>Beau looked around at Molly again. Molly could only shrug back. It wasn’t as though he’d had a particularly clear idea of how this was going to go, but if he had, this would not have been it.</p><p>“Wait, back up a second,” she said, sounding every bit as confused as Molly felt. “Are you Mr Clay?”</p><p>“Mm. Caduceus Clay. Sit.”</p><p>They sat, as Caduceus Clay set about making tea, with the ceremonious care of a person for whom rather more than a nice hot drink was at stake. The smell reminded Molly of just how long it had been since he’d had a drink of anything, which didn’t particularly help.</p><p>“Ah...hello?” Nott said awkwardly, knotting her fingers together in her lap. “Hi?”</p><p>Clay - Caduceus? He’d introduced himself as ‘Mr Clay’, so probably not the sort who’d appreciate being called ‘Caduceus’ straight off the bat, which was a damn shame, since it seemed like it’d nickname well, and people responded better when you used their name a lot for some reason - held up two fingers in a staying gesture.</p><p>“Oh- We have to wait? Oh- Okay.”</p><p>Clay was still busily engaged in pouring out four cups of strong, sweet-smelling tea, the same deep red-purple colour as the flowers it had come from. </p><p>“You have to share,” he said, looking up for a moment as he set out the mismatched cups. “I- apologise.”<br/>“I don’t drink tea-”</p><p>“I’m gonna- I mean, booze is fine-”</p><p>Nott and Keg had spoken more-or-less at once. Still, more tea for the rest of them.<br/>“Yeah, think I’ll pass too,” Sito agreed, hanging back.</p><p>Molly put on a smile, and accepted a cup of his own. “I genuinely don’t know how to say no to tea.”</p><p>“Me neither,” Mr Clay agreed peaceably.</p><p>Nila smiled. “I would <em> love </em> to try your tea.” <br/>“Please, let me know what you think,” Clay said, with a small, genuine smile that seemed to take in both Molly and Nila. </p><p>Nila took one long sip. Her ears twitched happily.</p><p>“It is delicious!”</p><p>It was, Molly had to admit, pretty good. Sort of spicy, with a fruity sort of aftertaste, and not so sweet it made his teeth hurt. He said so, and watched Clay’s mouth twitch up into a wider smile.</p><p>“Only grows here,” the priest said briskly, returning to his own cup.</p><p>“I would like to hug you,” Nila added, the words sort of falling all over each other in their eagerness to get out.</p><p>Clay looked sincerely delighted by this: </p><p>“Oh- Please, come,” he said, beckoning Nila closer with both hands, only to find himself lifted clean off his feet by the force of it, despite being about a head taller than Nila</p><p>“I haven’t had one of these in a long time,” Molly could hear Clay saying, slightly muffled against Nila’s shoulder. “That’s nice.”<br/>“I am from the Guitao Clan,” Nila said, setting Clay back down on his feet again - a little unsteadily, as if he’d just had all the breath squeezed out of him. Which, by the looks of that hug, he probably had. “Do you- Do you know us?” <br/>“No,” Clay admitted, still a little breathless. “That- I’m sure they’re wonderful, though. That sounds- just great. That sounds wonderful. Friends,” he sighed again, more heavily, and picked up his cup again. “You have come.” Another sigh as he spread his hands. “Please, let me know what can I do for you?” His eyes, now Molly was looking, were almost the same pink as his hair, maybe shading a little towards purple, and very penetrating in a way that was not entirely comfortable. “Usually when people come here, it is because of some great tragedy. How can I allieve your pain?”</p><p>Molly looked around, to see if anyone else was going to answer.</p><p>It didn’t seem like anyone was going to. Nott was chewing on her lip hard enough to draw blood, Beau just looked exhausted, Nila...didn’t seem to know where to start.</p><p>“...well,” he started. “We’ve...we’ve certainly been through a bit, lately. We...were hoping to get your help with that. It’s...a few different tragedies, but all of them have the same root cause, and we were hoping you might...see your way clear to helping us remove it.”</p><p>Clay blinked. “...remove what, exactly?”</p><p>“We’ve recently lost...several of our friends,” Nott piped up. “Not- Not <em> lost </em>lost,” she added quickly. “I mean...they don’t need burying or anything, at least, not that we know of, but...they were taken.”</p><p>“Taken by a group calling themselves the Iron Shepherds, if you’ve heard of them,” Beau added. “We’re here to get them back. Trouble is, one of the people taken was our healer, and without her, our chances of surviving an encounter with them get a lot smaller. We were hoping you’d be willing to help us.”</p><p>“We can offer repayment,” Molly added, as brightly as he could manage. “Though I’m not sure I know...you don’t seem to have much use for gold out here, but we could probably offer <em> something </em> in exchange…” He realised abruptly that he was playing with the ring again, and made himself stop. “If there are any...any favours you need doing, or- Obviously, we’d have to do that <em> after </em> getting our friends out, and I realise it is asking you to take a lot on trust, but under the circumstances, I’m sure you can see how rescuing not just our own friends, but many others - including a number of the Guitao Clan, whom you...seem to have a certain respect for - must be the first priority here. But, once that’s done, I’m sure the others will understand just how <em> much </em>we all are going to owe you, and offer some- some appropriate repayment.”</p><p>Clay put his head on one side. “Oh. That is an impressive line of persuasion you’ve got there. That’s a lot.”</p><p>Molly’s heart sank. “...that’s a no, then,” he said dully. Shit. How much time had they already wasted? He could feel, second-hand but no less sharp for it, the dull, persistent ache of Caleb’s knee where something - a maul, maybe - had shattered the kneecap, now that that first flash of white-hot agony had started to fade. He could feel, too, the criss-cross of lashes across his back, the worsening pain in his wrists and shoulders. How long did they have? Not long enough.</p><p>This was the point where Fjord might’ve stepped in and said something about as acceptable, with the benefit of coming from him instead of Molly. Unfortunately, Fjord wasn’t here. Fjord was off...shit, probably getting the same treatment as Caleb, or something close to it, and couldn’t arrange his own rescue.</p><p>If he was even alive now - Caleb wouldn’t be, Molly knew with an awful heavy certainty, if it hadn’t been for the rings. That knife in the side would’ve seen to him, then or later. If Lorenzo had tried that on any of the others, if he’d done that to Yasha-</p><p>No. There was no guarantee of that. Lorenzo had wanted Molly to take Caleb’s injuries and die from them. He hadn’t counted on them finding another healer, or another means of healing. That was all. He wouldn’t have killed the others. Keg had been right - he wanted to make a profit here, didn’t he? You didn’t kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.</p><p>“That’s not what I said,” Clay pointed out, raising his hands a little. “I’m sorry, I seem to have made things worse. I’ve no problem with helping you save your friends, though I don’t know how much help I can be to you.”</p><p>“Do you know the Iron Shepherds?” Keg cut in, frowning at him. Her jaw was tighter than ever now, her shoulders hunched.</p><p>Clay shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, I really don’t get to leave very often, especially these days.”</p><p>“...are you trapped here?” Molly couldn’t help but ask.</p><p>It would make sense - there was clearly <em> some </em> kind of magic going on here, and...well, it was <em> nice </em>at the Blooming Grove, as these things went. Flowers, nice climate, fresh water, steady accommodation...not what Molly would’ve gone for, but he’d seen much worse. Still, there was a difference between ‘probably a nice place to live’ and just...never leaving. He hadn’t understood it in half the villages he’d passed through, and in most of them, at least, there were other people around to alleviate some of the boredom.</p><p>“No, no, nothing like that.” Clay suddenly became quite fascinated with the teakettle.</p><p>“Are there...do you live alone here?” Molly pressed. Ophelia hadn’t mentioned anyone else, he didn’t think, but it was worth asking.</p><p>“No,” Clay said quickly, or as quickly as that voice could manage. Something about it seemed to slow down every word. “No, I don’t. The rest of my family are...they’re away right now. I’m just holding the fort on my own ‘til they get back.”</p><p>“How long have you been out here on your own?” Beau asked, squinting.</p><p>“Uh…” Clay squinted a little. It seemed to be taking him a while to figure out, which put the answer at ‘far too damn long’, to Molly’s judgement. Clay sighed. “...been twenty seasons now? Eighteen seasons? Try not to count, it, uh, just gets in the way of more important things.”</p><p>And, okay, Molly’s reading wasn’t the best, but he’d picked up <em> numbers </em>like anything. Five years. At least five years, if that was when Clay had stopped counting.</p><p>“Hell of a time to be all on your own,” he said cautiously, just to feel out some kind of response. “How long since you had another visitor?”</p><p>Clay smiled, and looked down at his cup. “It's been about two seasons, I suppose. Little bit of business, but it's been very- very slow.”</p><p>“Do you only gauge time in seasons?” Beau asked, sounding every bit as discomfited by this whole conversation as Molly felt, so at least he wasn’t the only one here at a loss for anything to say.</p><p>Clay shrugged. “‘s the only time that seems to matter.”</p><p>Beau paused. “...that’s fair,” she admitted grudgingly.</p><p>“I agree,” Nila piped up.</p><p>Nott was peering around with obvious interest. “Do you- Do you work here? Is this your place? Do you own this land? Is this-? Are you-?”</p><p>“I’m so excited,” Clay said, not sounding terribly excited at all.</p><p>“Are you the...funeral director?” Nott prodded.</p><p>Clay sighed again, but he was smiling. “Most people who come here know what this place is, this is- this is going to be delightful. I’ve never had to explain it before.”</p><p>Molly...honestly couldn’t tell if the priest was being sarcastic. That took a truly impressive level of deadpan.</p><p>“It’s a- a graveyard?” Nott said, gesturing broadly with both hands. “A boneyard?”</p><p>Clay...seemed to mislike that, so far as Molly could tell. The guy was worryingly hard to read, honestly, he didn’t seem to <em> do </em>expressions other than ‘good-natured indifference’. </p><p>“Well, boneyard is a- that’s a- it’s a bit crass, but yeah, this is a- this is a place where we take the dearly departed people who have done well and people who have lived good lives and we put them into earth that has been touched by the Wildmother and, in turn, she grants them with beauty and splendour and sometimes tea.”</p><p>Slowly, Molly looked down at his own half-drunk cup.</p><p>“So, like a boneyard sort of a place?” Nott pressed.</p><p>Clay paused with his cup halfway to his lips. “...more like...a garden,” he said after a moment, which was a hedge if ever Molly had heard one. He thought - Clay made it very hard to tell when he was hedging and when he was just taking a while to figure out what he wanted to say. It made Molly uneasy. “We have been tending this garden for generations,” Clay went on.</p><p>Beau took another glance down at her own cup. Molly was already trying to figure out if there was a way to discreetly pour his out somewhere, and forget he’d ever thought it was tasty.</p><p>“We’re drinking dead people tea?” Beau asked.</p><p>“Aren’t we all?” Clay said peaceably. </p><p>Molly paused, and set the cup down carefully. “I...don’t know if I should have any more,” he said, flashing a smile in the hopes that it’d make this a little less awkward. “I'm technically dead person Tealeaf already, so maybe I should hold off until I’ve figured out whether or not this counts as cannibalism.”</p><p>Clay shrugged. “I mean...the only real problem with cannibalism is the brain rot, so long as you’re not actually killing people to do it. Wouldn’t recommend it as ordinary practice, but once the body’s been returned to the Wildmother, it should be safe enough.”</p><p>Well, that was...concerning.</p><p>“You eat people?” Nott squeaked. <br/>“Nah. No.” Clay was already shaking his head. “We’re strict vegetarians here, but...this far north, winters are hard. We’ve had a few people come through who’ve had to eat a few other people to tide themselves through a lean time. And a few people who should’ve been buried here who didn’t because their families needed meat right away, not tea later on. Not saying it’s something I’d want to do, but it wasn’t something most of them wanted to do, either. I try not to judge,” he said, judgmentally.</p><p>Right. That was worrying, and Molly definitely was not going to think about the fact that he - that this body had apparently spent a fair bit of time up here. Or about what ‘the brain rot’ was. That way lay nightmares, and it wasn’t as though there was anything he could really do about it now. </p><p>“...well,” he said, after a moment, when it became clear that nobody else was going to say anything. “We- Presumably you’ll want to know a bit more about us before you decide if you’re going to help or not- Or, at least,” he amended. “More about what we’re up against.”</p><p>“Our friends,” Beau added, “Who are being held captive.”</p><p>“We believe the Shepherds want to sell them,” Molly said, just because that was the sort of thing most people who liked to think themselves decent would at least make a show of disapproving of - he still couldn’t get much of a read on Caduceus Clay, and it was making him uneasy. “And we know for sure that one of them at least has been tortured - is being tortured,” he corrected, because Lorenzo- He might  not be doing anything <em> now </em>, but he wasn’t going to just stop, Molly knew. Sooner or later, he’d feel Caleb’s agony written cold across his skin, and he’d just have to feel it, and know that he could do something, and not do it.</p><p>“There are firbolgs in that group, too, that need help,” Nila said, leaning forward, more fiercely than they’d heard from her before.</p><p>“They’ve been kidnapped,” Nott put in, “Including a firbolg child.”</p><p>“And they might not have long to live,” Beau finished.</p><p>Keg grimaced. “And, honestly, that might be better than what happens if the Shepherds get to keep them much longer. I don’t- It’s <em> bad </em>. What they do to people. Most- I mean, most survive it, but that was when the Shepherds still had a healer of their own. Most of their ways of breaking people...it took a lot of healing to get them back up to the sort of condition they could sell them in.”</p><p>She hunched her shoulders, not looking any of them in the eye. Molly couldn’t blame her. He didn’t much want to look Keg in the eye right now either.</p><p>“They’re bad guys,” Nott agreed quickly. “We’re good guys. Well, we’re sort of bad guys too, but, you know, taken on the whole…”</p><p>“We’re working on it,” Beau added, as a compromise.</p><p>Keg gave an awkward sort of shrug. “We’re doing all right.”</p><p>“Are you a bad guy?” Nott added, out of nowhere.</p><p>Clay paused, his mouth half-open. He seemed to be giving the question a great deal of thought, which was...probably a hopeful sign? In Molly’s experience, people who could answer that question without a little bit of forethought tended to be self-righteous dickheads.</p><p>“You know, honestly, I don’t think I’ve really had enough experience to have an opinion on that,” he said after a few moments. “I’m a good gardener.”</p><p>Okay, that was something to jump on, at least. Molly looked around, obviously. “I was going to say,” he agreed, with as much brightness as he could muster. “You’re looking after all this yourself?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“What do you grow, other than dead tea?” Nott asked, her grip on her flask tightening a little.</p><p>Clay paused, and pointed behind them “I grow lilies. I grow bramble, mushrooms, moss…”</p><p>“Dead bramble,” Beau said quietly. “Dead mushrooms. Dead moss.”</p><p>“And very beautiful it all is too,” Molly said hurriedly, half-over her, “You’ve clearly put a- a great deal of effort into all this, and we appreciate that. Really.”</p><p>Clay’s eyes settled on him again, and Molly felt- <em> weighed </em>, and measured, and, perhaps, found wanting.</p><p>“...huh,” Clay said slowly, after a long moment. “You know, I’m not actually going to refuse to help you if you’re not complimentary about my garden. I mean...nice if you are, but…”</p><p>“It <em> is </em> lovely,” Nila insisted. She was probably even being genuine. Which- Yeah, okay, it <em> was </em>nice here. Molly hadn’t been lying about that, even if he’d also been buttering Clay up something fierce. Not that it seemed to be working that well.</p><p>“Oh, thank you. It used to be- Well, there used to be more of it, but you probably saw that as you came in. As I'm sure you've possibly noticed, and I apologize if I'm breaking some terrible news to anyone who didn't, uh, the forest beyond my little patch of earth is a- is a little unsavory. It's dark. It can be a bit dangerous. Don't recommend going out alone. Uh. It has been overtaking our temple for the last hundred years, and recently has breached the walls again.” He breathed out heavily. It was not, quite, a sigh.</p><p>Beau cast a panicked look at Molly, who returned it, not sure why he had suddenly become the person she looked to. </p><p>“We, uh-” she started. </p><p>“That’s...that’s...bad?” Nott tried. “I mean...obviously it’s bad, but...you haven’t tried to fix it?”</p><p>“My family have,” Clay admitted. “That’s why I’m- I’m the last one left, I suppose. I’ve never...actually said that out loud before.” A troubled expression flitted across his face for a moment before his expression smoothed out again. “Everyone’s either wandered off to help try and fix what's been going wrong or has been put into the earth. The last one to leave was my sister. She went east.”</p><p>It sounded awful to Molly. Being stuck in one place was bad and bad enough when you had friends and family and a whole community ‘round you, or at least the pace and excitement of the cities, little as he’d seen of them. But if you were all alone, except for the occasional visitor bringing a body to be buried...corpses weren’t great conversationalists, in Molly’s admittedly limited experience. He couldn’t imagine the people bringing the corpses were that much better.</p><p>“So, what are you still doing here?” he asked, eyeing Clay speculatively. “I mean...business has been so slow, forest closing in...does someone need to stay and keep an eye on the place?”</p><p>“I mean- Yeah, someone has to,” Clay admitted, sounding rather taken aback, which was at least a <em> reaction </em>. “But, honestly it's a little dangerous for a lone person to leave. I figured I'd sit here with a kettle and wait for someone to come along, and maybe see if I can make my way out of here and figure out what's been happening in this place.”</p><p>Beau narrowed her eyes a little. “So...you’re planning to leave, but you can’t do it on your own?”</p><p>“More or less, yeah.”</p><p>Molly grinned his brightest, most persuasive come-to-our-carnival grin. “Well, in that case, we may have good news for you! We’d be more than happy to escort you anywhere you want to go, or do any other favours you might require - within reason, of course - just as soon as we’re all back together again!”</p><p>“<em> Almost </em> all,” Sito cut in sharply. “You’ll be coming with me, won’t you?”</p><p>Their eyes were very dark, and pitiless. It took an effort of will not to shudder.</p><p>“That <em> is </em>what I agreed to,” Molly said, because that much, at least, wasn’t a lie. Honestly, he was quite sure Sito knew damn well that Molly meant to double-cross them as soon as an opportunity arose. That they were sticking around and helping anyway could mean a lot of things, but none of them were good.</p><p>There was another tense silence.</p><p>Nott coughed. “We do...uh…” she looked at Clay. “We do need to know - we came here because our- our healer was one of those taken. She’s- I mean, she’s a very good cleric,” she added quickly. “And a very great detective, even if healing is- if it’s not her favourite thing to do. But...how do we know you’re a- know you’re good at healing? I mean, can we- Is there a chance we can have a- a demonstration, or…?”</p><p>“Maybe see if he agrees first,” Molly suggested. “No offence,” he added, looking back at Clay, because...well, talking about someone as if they weren’t there never went down well. Saying ‘no offence’ didn’t usually work that well either, but...Molly really wasn’t at his best right now.</p><p>“I mean, I’d be willing,” Clay offered. “If- It sounds like you’re inviting me to go with you, but-”</p><p>“We are,” Nila said eagerly, on one long exhale. “Very much.”</p><p>“Oh, yeah- Sorry, did we not-” Keg started.</p><p>Beau cut across both of them. “Just- Bit of advance warning, this is gonna get....I think this is gonna be bloody. Most of the people we’re gonna be doing it to deserve it, but...you should probably know what you’re signing up for.”</p><p>Clay paused. “Well,” he said carefully. “I don’t know if I think that anyone deserves anything, but...I don’t like cages. And, uh,” he huffed out another sigh. “I’m really-” he broke off.</p><p>“You don’t...have a particular penchant or sympathy towards people who eat babies, do you?” Beau asked, trying and failing to sound bored.</p><p>Clay frowned a little. Which- Fair, this wasn’t a situation you ended up in all that often. Well, it wasn’t one Molly had ever been in before, which applied to a lot of situations, but he felt like baby-eating should not be something people should have to think about more than...maybe once in their lives, if that. Honestly, he’d have been quite happy never to have to think about eating babies as a real-life thing some people actually did at all, but here they were.</p><p>“That seems a little specific,” he said, after a moment. “I’m really- I’m mostly interested in trying to take care of the natural order of the world, and nature itself.”</p><p>“So does murder…end up on that checklist?” Keg asked, with all the caution Molly would expect from someone - someone other than Nott - navigating a trapped floor. </p><p>“Have you ever <em> been </em>in nature? Yes. Violence is extremely natural.”</p><p>Which- Okay, yes, Molly couldn’t really argue with that one.</p><p>Keg nodded. “Tight.”</p><p>“No, no, but-” Nila cut in. “The people we are- The people that we are after have done <em> terrible </em> things. They have upset the balance of nature so much by what they have done. They <em> do not deserve to live </em>.” She paused for a moment, gathering herself. “Please come with us. I have an idea,” she added eagerly, leaning forwards. “If you can come with us, maybe some of the firbolgs from my tribe can come help you here afterwards- can help keep the temple afterwards.”</p><p>Clay gave that all due consideration. “Well,” he said. “I don’t know about ‘deserve’, but I think there’s always- somewhere there’s a plant that needs some compost, and I’m happy to make some more if it’ll make people happy.”</p><p>“Was that you saying you're willing to kill people and put them in the ground to make compost?” Beau asked, gesturing broadly.</p><p>Nott tipped her head on one side. “I think so.”</p><p>“It sounded like that,” Molly agreed.</p><p>Clay smiled again, that same peaceable, friendly smile. “You’ve got a lot of- a lot of aggression. You’ve got a lot of anger.”</p><p>“Oh, man, you’re-” Beau shook herself. “You’re seeing me at a pretty- relatively calm moment, actually.”</p><p>“I mean, considering...everything,” Molly added. “We have just lost a few of our friends to these people, that’s...bound to provoke a bit of aggression. And we are - I promise, we are much less aggressive when we’re not dealing with that. Mostly. Well, some of us. Beau, unfortunately, is just always like that-”</p><p>“Fuck you, Molly,” Beau retorted, sounding relieved. </p><p>“So- Welcome to the Mighty Nein!” Molly finished, a little desperately. “Glad to have you on board.”</p><p>“There’s only-” Clay started, sounding confused. “Or- Huh. So there were nine of you, before…?”</p><p>“Seven, technically,” Molly admitted. “Well, unless you count Frumpkin - that’s the cat. Or- Currently the bird. He seems to have wandered off someplace, but you’ll meet him later.” </p><p>“Don’t- Don’t overthink it,” Beau advised, since Clay still looked a bit flummoxed.</p><p>“Do you know Pumat Sol, by any chance?” Nott added.</p><p>“Nott!” Keg snapped.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>Clay looked blank. “Is that a type of plant?”</p><p>Nott looked disappointed “All right, then no. No, I just had to ask.”</p><p>“Friend of ours,” Molly added, when the blank look didn’t fade. “He’s...kinda distinctive. I wouldn’t say one of a kind, but…”</p><p>“Maybe three or four of one,” Nott supplied. </p><p>“I’ve actually already packed,” Clay cut in. “I’ll go get my things.”</p><p>His things, as it turned out, meant a set of pearly armour that looked like the carapace of an unusually large blue-green beetle, half-grown over with lichen and moss the same shade of pink as his hair. More of the same lichen was growing on his boots, and on the heavy gnarled staff with the purple crystal that he’d brought out with him, and more again on his equally blue-green and beetley shield. And, all right, it wasn’t something Molly might’ve gone for, but he could at least recognise and appreciate a cultivated <em> aesthetic </em> when he saw one.</p><p>Clay breathed out deeply as he stepped out. He seemed...a little lighter, somehow, which was a very strange thing in a person whose armour, however interestingly organic, had to weigh more than everything Molly was wearing put together. </p><p>“Give me a minute,” he said, shifting his grip on the staff a little. “Just going to walk around once, take it in.”</p><p>He set off around the temple, with a long ground-eating stride that looked a lot more ambling than it probably was.</p><p>“...if the thing he needs from us is our blood or something, should we- I mean, should we ask about it?” Nott said, as soon as he was out of sight. “We said we’d do him a favour, but, I mean...we should find out what he wants from us before we just blindly agree to this! I mean- What if he wants Keg?”</p><p>“Well, that shouldn’t pose too much of a problem for you,” Molly said nastily. She’d gone along all too easily with giving him up, and he’d been around longer than Keg.</p><p>Nott flinched a little, but ploughed on. “No, I mean, like some sort of like...concubine thing! I don’t know! What if he’s creepy or freaky like that!”</p><p>“We’ve dealt with creepier,” Molly pointed out, shooting a look at Sito, who didn’t even deign to glance at him. Well, not openly, anyway - he’d caught them shooting little looks in his direction, as if trying to figure out where to start cutting to try and find the Lucien they were after.</p><p>“Yes, but obviously we’re not ac-” Nott started, and then cut herself off, her eyes flicking warily to Sito. “I mean- We know they aren’t- That that isn’t anything too-” Liar, Molly thought. Even Nott seemed to know that wasn’t what was going on here. She could at least be honest about having sold him out.</p><p>“I mean, I’d be into it,” Keg spoke up.</p><p>Nott’s nose wrinkled. “Really?”</p><p>“I’m not picky!”<br/>“Yeah, we all noticed that,” Molly said cattily, just to make Beau bristle, so that maybe then things would start to feel halfway normal again.</p><p>“First off - fucking rude,” Beau said, though she didn’t sound <em> that </em>offended. “Second - he wants your blood, you got some to spare. You can get more of it. That's how your body works.”</p><p>Nott’s face flattened out in affront. “What?”</p><p>“He does not seem freaky to me at all,” Nila interrupted, sounding very earnest now. “He seems very nice. Like a normal firbolg.”</p><p>“...okay?” Nott muttered.</p><p>Molly shrugged “I mean, who’s really ‘normal’ anyway? Well, obviously a lot of people are,” he amended. “But <em> we’re </em> all pretty weird already, so I don’t feel like we’ve really got the room to judge on this one.” <br/>“The <em> tea </em>is made from people!” Nott restated, her voice shooting up about three octaves in the course of about one sentence, and it had been pretty squeaky before.</p><p>“Pretty good tea, though,” Molly pointed out, just as Clay reappeared from around the other side of the temple. </p><p>“Yeah,” Beau agreed, and raised her voice. “Hey, Clay! Did you bury, uh, Tyrial Colsala here?”<br/>She gestured at one of the gravestones. Clay looked a little blank, but went to look.</p><p>“Casala?” he asked, frowning a little.</p><p>“Yeah. Yeah, him. That’s what I said.”</p><p>Clay’s brow furrowed. “What did you think you were drinking?”<br/>Beau opened and closed her mouth. “...Cosala?” she managed at last.</p><p>Clay smiled. “That’s- uh- Yeah. That’s very close. It’s good. It’s...always worth trying.”</p><p>“Can you only make tea from people you buried personally?” Molly asked, intrigued despite himself. </p><p>Clay paused. He seemed to be considering it. “No, no. I mean...some of the older graves are inaccessible, of course, because the forest has taken them back, and no-one really wanted to try and experiment with what sort of effect that would have on the tea if anyone drank it.”<br/>Molly thought back to the bear with half its skeleton on the outside, and had to fight back a shudder. “...probably a good idea,” he allowed. </p><p>Clay breathed in, deep, and turned around to look up at the temple. “All right,” he said, staring up at it. “I’m ready to leave. I’m going to be- It’s going to be a little- uh, a little much, but I think I can do it. I’m ready.”</p><p>In Molly’s experience, anyone who had to say they were ready that many times was either long past ready or nowhere near ready. The problem was, Clay made it very hard to figure out which.</p><p>“Great,” Beau said, and turned challenging eyes on Sito. “So. Show us your secret tunnel.”</p><p>“Are we sure about that?” Nott piped up, sounding panicked. “I mean...they’re...and- Do we need any more help? Any more- I don’t know, manpower? I mean...we don’t even know what he does!”</p><p>“I’m with Nott,” Keg put in.<br/>“He’s a firbolg, yeah,  but…” Nott cut off. “Hey, Mr Clay? I’m going to shoot Sito with my crossbow.”</p><p>“<em> What- </em>?”</p><p>“That doesn’t seem like a very good idea-”</p><p>Too late. Molly heard the <em> twang </em>of the bowstring, and a loud curse and thud from Sito.</p><p>Unfortunately, Nott appeared to have missed.</p><p>“Sorry!” Nott squeaked, sounding quite impressively insincere even by Molly’s standards, which, so far as insincerity went, were pretty high. “I just- I was just going to test if he could really heal you!”</p><p>Sito turned the world’s creepiest grin - again, quite a high bar with Nott in the party - on Nott. Nott gave a nervous sort of smothered giggle, already instinctively dropping the bow to reload before remembering it was a Tinkertop model, and had a mechanism for that. <br/>“Maybe wait until <em> after </em>they’ve shown us the tunnel for that?” Beau suggested, her voice tighter than the bowstring.</p><p>“You can shoot them all you like, then,” Molly agreed.</p><p>Sito snorted. “Or I could just kill the lot of you, take what’s left of the Nonagon and leave your friends to their fate,” they suggested. “If that’s what you’re pushing for, I mean.”</p><p>Despite the sticky heat, the grove felt, all at once, very cold.</p><p>“...no,” Molly said after a moment, forcing the word out through stiff lips and a tongue that felt thick and heavy in his mouth.</p><p>Sito crossed their arms. “I’m altering the deal,” they said, jerking their chin at Molly and meeting Beau’s eyes. “I take you to the tunnel, but then I’m out. And I’m taking him with me. Try to stop me, and I’ll put a bolt between the eyes of anyone who makes a move.”</p><p>Molly could taste bile. That was too soon. Too soon - they’d planned for what to do if it came to a fight afterwards, but not- Could they do that?</p><p>“I count six of us,” Beau said after a moment. “And only one of you.”</p><p>Sito grinned, a wide and bloody thing like a gash in their thin face. “Think it’ll make any difference?”</p><p>Beau caught Molly’s eyes. They both knew what was happening.</p><p>If Sito meant it, or even if they didn’t- If this came to a fight, now-</p><p>They might be able to get into the Sour Nest some other way. Maybe. If Caleb had been with them, if they’d had Frumpkin for scouting and another spellcaster to ease the way, they could’ve done it.</p><p>They didn’t.</p><p>Could they risk the others’ lives on ‘might’?</p><p>“...fine,” Molly gritted out, furious and resentful and already trying to think of some way out of this that wasn’t going to end with him dead and his corpse being dragged back to Cree so they could shove Lucien back inside a body he’d <em> long </em> since given up. “Fucking- Fine. <em> After </em>you’ve shown us the passage.”</p><p>“Molly-” Nott started, in a very small, pained sort of voice. “You- You know-”</p><p>“If the next words out of your mouth are going to be ‘it’s for the best’,” Molly said levelly, not looking at her. “I’m going to throw you into that pond over there and leave you.”</p><p>A sort of shudder went through Nott at that - she couldn’t seem to quite control it. For a moment, Molly could almost have felt bad, except-</p><p>Sito shrugged. “Come after us if you want to,” they said dismissively. “Something tells me your friends won’t be in any state to travel.”</p><p>Clay was looking more than usually blank.</p><p>“...I think I’ve missed something here.”</p><p>“You don’t-” Beau started, then sucked in a breath through her teeth. “I’ll fill you in on it as we go. Sito...you want to take the lead here? Since, y’know, you’re the only one who knows where we’re going?”</p><p>Sito’s eyes narrowed.</p><p>“I want him with me,” they said, jerking their chin at Molly. “Not off at the back where he can fuck off into the trees before we get there.”</p><p>“‘He’ is getting tired of being talked about as if he weren’t here,” Molly said sourly. Sito didn’t even turn their head.</p><p>It was a long walk from the Blooming Grove to the entrance to Sito’s tunnel. Apparently the Tomb Takers had only cared about getting out of the fortress itself, not getting <em> to </em>anywhere in particular. It felt even longer at the front of the convoy, with Sito two paces in front of him and Nott just behind, while Beau and Clay - Caduceus, he’d told them to call him Caduceus fairly early in the march - lagged at the rear.</p><p>Once again, Molly found himself wishing that Yasha were there. Yasha would- Yasha would <em> be there </em>, then, not- not suffering whatever tortures Lorenzo could devise for her - that he would be devising, right now, if Caleb had not proven a more entertaining victim.</p><p>Molly could feel the shadow of every blow, now, and he didn’t know which was worse - the awful knowledge that this was happening to Caleb, or the sneaking relief, quiet enough he hadn’t noticed it when he’d been able to take every blow for him and feel like he was doing something that way, that if it was Caleb, at least it wasn’t Yasha under the - it felt like a hammer, this time. Some kind of blunt instrument, taken to the joints. It felt unnatural every time Molly took a step, that his own knees and elbows and shoulders all still worked as they should.</p><p>They could heal him, Molly reminded himself. Once they got there, they could heal him.</p><p>The next blow took him in the patella, and even the echo of it nearly knocked Molly’s leg out from under him. He stumbled, just for a moment, and felt Nott’s eyes boring into his back. If Caleb was alive when they got there, they could heal him.</p><p>Just now, that didn’t feel like a certainty.</p><p>If Sito took him, could Molly-</p><p>He could take more injuries. Beau wouldn’t be there to stop him, then. And confident as Sito seemed of their ability to get Molly’s corpse back to Cree for her to do...whatever it was she meant to do with it...corpses were cumbersome. And Molly was about twice Sito’s size. It might slow them down, at least, enough for the others to catch up, and burn the body before they could use it.</p><p>Molly didn’t like the idea of dying, but if it was one or the other…would there be anything left of him for the Matron to take, if they brought Lucien back?</p><p>Or-</p><p>Sito would have to sleep eventually. And, unless he cut Molly’s throat right off, Molly was pretty good at getting out of bindings. Anything short of chains, he could probably manage, and Sito probably didn’t have a set of manacles tucked away in their pack. It was a chance, at least.</p><p>...he’d try that option first. If that didn’t work, the other was still a possibility. If he could arrange for it. If he could wrangle...five minutes, to say goodbye. He’d have to bug Beau or someone to get it to work, probably, which didn’t make it any <em> better </em>, as plans went, but at least she’d be as annoyed by that as he was.</p><p>It had taken them hours to reach the Blooming Grove. It was full dark, by the time Sito called a halt, and even Lorenzo’s appetite for torture seemed to have been sated, though Molly still felt the phantom agony at every joint that said that the Iron Shepherds, having healed Caleb once, saw no reason to do it a second time, since Molly was no longer obliging.</p><p>He’d feel it, when Caleb was healed, Molly told himself. He’d feel it if Caleb died, too. But not the others. Not Yasha. Not Jester. Not Fjord. </p><p>He’d been trying not to think about that. It wasn’t working particularly well.</p><p>“This is it,” Sito said, out of nowhere, in a clearing that did not actually look materially different from any of the hundreds of clearings they’d already passed through. Molly wasn’t entirely sure this <em> wasn’t </em>the same clearing they already seemed to have walked through a hundred times, if he was honest. The crumbling stone ruins of some sort of small structure - a house, or a storehouse maybe - overgrown with grey-purple brambles, a tangle of looming trees that seemed to grow together to block out the moonlight, and mulch and moss and fallen leaves underfoot. All of it that same sickly grey-purple, even washed out by darkvision. It was a wonder Sito could tell this was the right clearing at all. In fact…</p><p>“Show us where it opens,” Beau said, crossing her arms, “We’re not giving you anything before we know what we’re getting back for it.”</p><p>Sito grunted, and ducked around the wall of the ruined building. Probably it had been a storehouse, Molly thought. There was hardly room there for a human-sized person to lie down.</p><p>Or-</p><p>The trapdoor was heavy, wood reinforced with metal, and already rotting. It was also large enough it took up almost the whole space between the stone foundations, the crumbling walls where a building had once stood, and maybe that had been what the building was there for to begin with? Caleb could probably have examined the ruins and told them so, if he were there. But if Caleb had been here, they could’ve taken their chances going over the walls and never needed to use Sito’s talents at all.</p><p>“This is it,” Sito said, stepping back. “‘s a fair way underground, but...out of sight all the way, and I get the feeling you’ll have better luck in the middle of the night anyway.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Beau said distantly, looking down into the pit. Molly edged back a little. It was still possible for him to run, he thought. Though, out here, there was no saying what he’d run into. Eaten by bears or dragged back to Cree to be turned into Lucien again, which would he rather risk?</p><p>...bears. Definitely the bears. </p><p>Beau huffed out a breath.</p><p>“Don’t suppose you’d be willing to come along and just...take a cut of the loot at the end?” she asked, not sounding overwhelmingly hopeful.</p><p>Sito’s mouth twitched. “No. I wouldn’t.”</p><p>“Worth a shot,” Beau muttered. “Okay. We tried.”</p><p>Sito snorted. “If you’re willing to give him up this easily, how much could he really be worth to you? Not that I don’t understand. There’s not much left.”</p><p>“Yeah, no, I think you’ve misunderstood,” Beau said, and all at once her staff was far, far too close to Sito’s neck. “You’re not taking anyone.”</p><p>Sito shifted. They were already reaching for their crossbow when the bolt caught them in the shoulder.</p><p>“No sudden moves!” Nott said fiercely, putting herself between- between Molly and Sito, her new crossbow levelled straight at them.</p><p>Sito raised their hands. They were wearing that faint, unnerving smile again, all teeth.</p><p>“Huh. Well, I can’t say I’m <em> that </em>surprised.”</p><p>That, Molly thought, made one of them.</p><p>Which-</p><p>It wasn’t a thought that would’ve occurred to him in the circus. Probably it wasn’t a thought that would’ve occurred to him even before they’d got to Shadycreek Run, and run into Sito. He’d...never have agreed to travel with the Nein at all, if he’d thought all along they were the sort of people who’d sell each other out like that.</p><p>Somehow, even with the plan, he’d somehow ended up thinking that it was just- just him now, the way it never had been before. He’d been the one who agreed to go with Sito in the first place, after all, even if the halfling had had them all over a barrel. Somehow, he’d slipped into thinking that they really would just let Sito have him.</p><p>When had that happened?</p><p>Sure, Beau wasn’t his <em> favourite </em> person - Yasha still held the top spot there - but she wasn’t <em> that </em>kind of arsehole. He hadn’t thought Nott was, before all this, either.</p><p>Apparently he’d been right. That...really shouldn’t have come as this much of a surprise.</p><p>Sito’s unsettling grin widened a little.</p><p>“Sure you don’t want to Message a friend?” they said, lowering their hands a little, though their crossbow remained slung over their back.</p><p>“Pos-” Beau started, and got no further, as Sito's knife sliced clean through the flimsy cloth of her turquoise coat-thing, blood shining against the steel as Sito <em> moved </em>, darting across the clearing to the far side, already unholstering the crossbow from its place on their back, the whole bow sparking with electricity. </p><p>Nott’s crossbow was already out and humming with tension, but the first shot went wide, embedding itself in a tree and sending up a cloud of shrieking birds as the amethyst at the tip of Clay’s staff flared with light.</p><p>Beau was already in motion, but Sito- Sito had disappeared between the trees, but Molly could already hear the twang and whistle of the crossbow and then- </p><p>The next bolt caught Keg in the shoulder, raising a hoarse yell of pain, the second going wide, and Molly whirled, already reaching for his swords, only for a feeling like being caught by a fishhook in the middle of his back to start dragging him across the clearing, even as he scrabbled and fought and dug in his heels against it.</p><p>“Forget about them! Get underground!” he could hear Beau yelling, as his boots skidded across leaf mulch. Desperately, Molly tried to bury one of his swords in the ground, but not deep enough - it skidded after him, scoring a pale line through the grey-purple undergrowth until it was wrenched from his hand.</p><p>“Molly, get your ass over here-! Molly!”</p><p>“Got you!” Sito’s hand closed hard over Molly’s arm, their yellow teeth flashing in the darkness. So Molly did the one thing he’d wanted to do since they’d met the halfling, and only thing he reasonably could. He balled up a fist and punched Sito square in the nose.</p><p>It wasn’t, as these things went, a particularly good punch. Yasha would barely have felt it. Beau would’ve made some kind of derisive remark about it being obvious why the circus had him peddling bullshit instead of bouncing. </p><p>It didn’t seem to matter. Sito reeled backwards. Probably they’d never realised that Molly was going to put up a fight at all. Or was capable of putting up a fight, maybe, the way they’d talked about him, like being dead or alive didn’t make much of a difference at all.</p><p>They recovered quickly, spitting out a mouthful of blood as Summer’s Dance sheared straight through the place where their neck had been, already disappearing behind another tree to reload - theirs was the ordinary sort of crossbow, the sort you had to drop and reload manually, not like the bolt-action of Cleff Tinkertop’s invention. It was enough to give Molly the space to drop and roll away to reclaim his carnival-glass sword and take off running back towards the trapdoor, where the rest of the Nein were ranged around. Beau was already dashing forward - he couldn’t see Nott or Nila anywhere - and her arm came across his shoulders just as something burnt itself into his skin.</p><p>Molly <em> screamed </em>.</p><p>He couldn’t seem to help it - there was something burning, under his skin, something lodged there, coin-sized and red-hot and <em> searing </em>.</p><p>“<em> Molly! </em>”</p><p>Beau’s grip tightened on his arm, until it was downright bruising, as that awful fishhook feeling caught him again in the small of the back, dragging him backwards.</p><p>“Molly!”</p><p>Hands were on him now, hauling him towards the pit, Molly could hear Beau swearing, and he struggled against the force of Sito’s - it had to be Sito’s, who <em> else </em>but Sito’s - magic, but to no avail.</p><p>Another bolt whistled past them, just barely missing Molly’s left ear, and Beau cursed again as the force of the spell dragged her along, too, her hand still closed viselike over Molly’s wrist. He could hear Nott crying out, saw a sudden, bright flare of light up ahead-</p><p>They nearly fell through the trapdoor together, and Molly would almost have stopped here, but Beau’s grip on his wrist didn’t ease, hauling him on, the pain in his shoulder intense enough now that Molly felt blinded and deafened and hopelessly overwhelmed by the force of it, so that the words of Beau’s yell were lost in white-hot agony-</p><p>Not blind enough, though, nor deaf enough, to miss what came next.</p><p>There was a sound like a shuddering roar, and the earth beneath his feet pitched and reeled like a tavern floor after about a dozen very stiff drinks. Molly could see- Nothing, darkvision doing nothing in the face of this much darkness. He turned back, helpless-</p><p>For a moment, he could see Sito, silhouetted blackly against a sky as grey-purple as everything else in this cursed forest-</p><p>Just in time to see the trapdoor warp and twist as the earth swallowed it up, plunging the Nein into the dark.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Re: Nott - she never actually meant to sell Molly out. It's just that Molly, being very, very close to the end of his emotional reserves, is catastrophising a bit, and also still quite hurt about her attempts to make the best of the situation. They are going to deal with this, and it is not going to be a one-sided thing.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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